I usually PIF before my statements close and just let one card report. I'll change what card reports a balance every few months. Here are a few examples of what the accounts look like on my reports -
And I carried a balance on my Target card for awhile a few years ago -
You can see activity for the months that have a statement balance of $0.00. Those months show the amount paid.
@masscredit wrote:I'm currently playing with utilization to see what the sweet spot is for me. I had one card reporting $633.00 then dropped that down to $89.00. There was no score change (TU, EQ04 and EQ08). So for 1-2% total utilzation based on the credit limits of all cards. It stayed the same. I think I'll let it creep up a little. Work to 5, 6 or 7% and see what that does. One thing that I wonder is does the "shock" of a higher balance on a card result in a lose of points? Example - a card usually has a $600.00 and then that jumps up to $1500.00. That would be less than 20% of that card's utilization. Would the balance increasing 250% cause some points to be lost even though the utilization is low?
All testing has suggested it's instant in time calculation; FICO doesn't calculate based on prior snapshots, so I can't see how credit "shock" would be implemented. 600 -> 1500 on a 1.5K CL card is way different than a 15K CL card to trivialize the example.
In my own testing I increased a balance by 100X, no hiccup on FICO 8.
