Posted by Michael on July 10, 2002 at 19:57:52:
Check out the website for Fair Isaac FICO scoring. I don’t recall the web address, but any search engine will get you there.
I did some mortgage brokering and have some experience with raising scores. Yes, reducing the balances will lift your score- only as long as there are zero balances. Let me explain. One factor is how much credit is “availiable” and the other is what % of that “available” credit is being used. So, If you have, lets say, a $1500 balance on a $3000 limit your are utilizing (or have run up) 50% of your avaialble credit. That would lower your score. If you lowered your available credit to reflect about 10% to 25% utilization- that would be ideal.
Hope that helps.