My score jumped 84 points in 4 months after one strategy shift

Sat at 612 back in July, stuck there for almost two years paying everything on time. I was doing the whole snowball thing and it barely moved. Then I read something about utilization per card instead of overall. I had three cards, each around 80% maxed. Paid down one card completely, left the other two alone. Within 60 days my score went to 668, then 696 by November. Same total debt, just moved it differently. Has anyone else seen that big a swing just from rebalancing where the balances sit? And does that actually stick or does the algorithm catch on eventually?

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1 Comment

the_wyatt19h ago

Wait til you see what happens when you get that second card down to zero too, right? I did the same thing last year, moved all my debt onto one card so the others showed zero balance, and my score jumped about 70 points in two months with no other changes. The algorithm seems to love seeing individual cards under 30% way more than just the total picture, and mine has held steady for almost a year now.