On mint.com, John Ulzheimer blogs, “The debt category is worth 30% of your FICO score points and while the credit card utilization percentage isn’t alone worth all 30% (that’s a myth), it’s certainly key to earning and maintaining great scores.”
The myth to which he refers was documented in 2009 on creditscoring.com with links calling out the offenders. His comments are part of a growing chorus of voices who set the record straight.
But it faces a gargantuan, ever-sprawling, contradictory, capricious foe. The silliness has existed on Wikipedia (looks like an encyclopedia; really just a message board) for over 5 years. Later, in the chain of wacky influence and rumor that swirls around credit scores, the Wikipedians (rhymes with comedians) were emboldened by–none other than–USA TODAY, which states, “The amount of debt you have outstanding, as a percentage of your available credit limit, accounts for 30% of your score.”
On February 4, the newspaper’s reply to a creditscoring.com inquiry for its source was only this URL:
http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/WhatsInYourScore.aspx
And so, of course, as anyone can see, USA TODAY’s story is bunk, thus Wikipedia is bunk.
Five years of bunk.
Almost six.
And counting.