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I have two credit card accounts, one from Cap One and one from a Local CU.
I used to just leave a small balance to have something to report. More recently I've been leaving super small balances (under 15) to be paid off during the interest free grace period. However, I noticed these report as 0% utilization on both accounts.
Is there some kind of threshold that creditors just say it's easier to report is nothing than negligible?
Depending on your CL, if your balance is less than $15 and your CL is $1,500 or more, then your util would be less than 1%. Perhaps in cases where the util is less than 1% they just round to 0%, but I'm not certain of this. Most people do say that leaving a balance of 1%-9% of the util on one card while having a $0 balance on all other cards is the way to go, so maybe you'd want to leave a little higher balance each month, depending on your CL.
My limits are low on both (500/500; I'm 21). So, I only need to be above 5 to report higher than 1% utilization which I have been.
Also, when I signed up for MyFico the first score was 749. After I got my CU card it went to 729 because it reported as a high balance since I didn't understand the statement closing date correctly; essentially reported as 50% utilization.
It's been about two months now. Myfico hasn't updated since I guess the score increase wasn't enough to trip me over into a new threshold paying the CU down, but my score went back to 747 per the Score Power report. The score simulator's best course of action recommendation is to continue paying on time for the next 24 months, in which case it estimates I'll be at 760-something.
However, it doesn't seem like the simulator has a way to plug in the affect of carrying a small balance on one of the cards and leaving the other 0. On my original score power report (pre CU card), it said paying off balances to below 10% would put me near 780+.
How much of a difference does carrying a small balance (that actually reports) make?
The score sim does say that I would get 10 less points for paying completely off than leaving 25-100 dollars on total utilization. Who knows? It's so hard to know bc that is based off 24 months of time, also.
Good Luck!