Mochaboy wrote:It took me 2 years, but I went from the low 500's to 695 (oh so close). I haven't paid a single penny in finance charges for 2 years because I pay my cards down twice a month (15th and the 1st).
My credit card (HSBC Platinum) has a 3k limit, but I spend close to 5-6k a month on it (travel expenses and what not). So I charge, pay, charge, pay. I always have a zero balance within days of my statement posting.
So I went to go check my credit report and my credit usage is being reported as a NEGATIVE. They're stating that I have a high utilization somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% (I have a total of 7k available credit across 4 cards).
How is that possible when I've been running a zero balance for 2 years? Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?
Thanks in advance.
Timing is everything, when it comes to paying your cc's and your FICO scores! 
If you're paying your cc's in full after receiving your statement (as most normal people do), then that's what's tripping you up, score-wise, because what's getting reported to the CRA's is most likely your balance as of your statement date, and if you use up a good chunk of your credit limit each month, then that reported balance is going to give you a higher util and a lower FICO score as a result. The scoring algorithm has no way to know that you PIF after you get your statement; it only sees the balances as reported by the CCC and calculates from that.
Most CCCs report your account balance as of your statement date, and most do the actual reporting to the credit bureaus ON your statement date as well (a few exceptions).
So, in general you can gain max FICO points by gearing your cc paying habits to your statement dates and/or account reporting dates (usually one and the same, but different in a few cases such as AmEx, US Bank and 1 or 2 others) to control the reported balances on your CR's and therefore your utiliization (debt-to-available credit ratio), since low util makes for happy FICO scores.
The trick is to either PIF before your statement/reporting date every month or to pay down to a tiny percentage of your overall credit limit (all zero balances can actually hurt your scores, so it pays to let at least one report a balance, unless you only have 1 or 2 cc's), let that tiny percentage report, then PIF once your statement cuts to avoid paying any interest.
Hope this helps.
