Carrying low balance on every CC hurts your score?

[Anonymous]

My score dropped 25 yesterday and the only reason I can think of is I keep about $10 balance on every credit cards (total 4 cards). is this normal? should keep 0 balance.

[Anonymous]

You got it mixed up...your probably will get a small decrease for keeping a $0 balance..oppose to a small balance...look at your reports closely...to see if something else has changed...

[marty56]

I get dinged if I have more then 1 CC report a balance small or not.

[fused]

For max revolving util FICO points, have less than 1/2 of your credit cards reporting any balance. The ones that do report a balance should be < 9% of their CL.

[scramblingin2007]

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marty56 wrote:

I get dinged if I have more then 1 CC report a balance small or not.

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me too, on TU. I noticed this month on my report: Too many accounts with balances. I only have 5 cards with very small balances at 7% total util and I got dinged with that!

[marty56]

While I am not 100% sure about score buckets I wonder if they play a role in how people's score is affected by the number of accounts that report a balance. 

I am either in the major derog (120 day late) score bucket or the old account score bucket.

If this is true, would it also follow that people who are dinged for more then 1 account showing a blance should not get dinged for no accounts showing a balance?

[scramblingin2007]

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marty56 wrote:

While I am not 100% sure about score buckets I wonder if they play a role in how people's score is affected by the number of accounts that report a balance. 

I am either in the major derog (120 day late) score bucket or the old account score bucket.

If this is true, would it also follow that people who are dinged for more then 1 account showing a blance should not get dinged for no accounts showing a balance?

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Marty, I'll answer this question next week. I am getting 7 120's removed by next fri. I'll let you know if and how much score jumps and if I get rebucketed

[marty56]

If I may ask which company are they with?  Mine is with BofA.  Also how old are they? Mine will be 3 years in August.

[Jesedmotherof5]

I also just paid more then half of my CCs to Zero So Im intrested in see the outcome of the half rule!

[haulingthescoreup]

I did get a score jump once on TU when I accidentally had all 5 CC's report $0. But others have reported a ding when that happens.

It might well be as marty said, and it varies by score bucket. I have a BT card, so it will be a long while before I can test this!