Originally Posted by
I can see for miles
I've read in several sources that your aggregate credit limit on all cards divided by your aggregate credit card balances determines your credit utilization ratio. If so, it wouldn't matter if you utilize 90 percent of the credit on one card and none on nine others or if you utilize 9 percent of the credit available to you on 10 different cards -- your utilization ratio would be the same either way. Is this not true?
That may be true as far as your FICO score alone is concerned, but your score is not the only thing that lenders look at. Different lenders may look at many different factors, and I'm fairly confident that having a nearly maxed out card looks riskier than having several lightly-utilized cards, even if the total utilization is the same.