In a new study, MagnifyMoney, a leading financial comparison and education website, partnered with VantageScore Solutions to see how much credit consumers are using — and how that impacts their credit score.
In the study, VantageScore delved into the credit score profiles of U.S. consumers who are using credit cards in 2017. Scores analyzed were on a 300 – 850 scale, using the VantageScore 3.0 score model.
We decided to home in on utilization — that’s how much credit people are using compared to how much credit they have available to them. Then, we looked at how their credit utilization corresponded to their credit score.
What we found is that people with excellent credit share one main trait in common: They have incredibly low utilization rates.
If you want the highest score, you need to make sure you haven’t missed any payments in the past and don’t have any public records, collection items or judgments. However, what this data shows is that even if you have a perfect payment history, low utilization is critical to get the highest score.