FICO impact when many cards are unused -- is there any?

[Anonymous]

my-own-fico - found inconsistencies between the bureaus and the reporting lenders. Sometimes they report "zero" balances and other times it shows no activity. The one that has done it the most on my report (inconsistent) is BofA. Can not predict what the reporting will do. Just ignore it and move on.

[vanillabean]

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@JagerBombs89 wrote:

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@Anonymous-own-fico wrote:

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@JagerBombs89 wrote:

If you let a balance report $0 for *X* amount of months, when it finally reports a balance, you will get a notification that there is recent activity on an inactive account.  Even if you make a purchase every single month and let it report $0, FICO thinks that you haven't used the account.  I say *X* months because I don't know the exact number.  Now everytime I have done the above scenario, my FICO drops a couple points for some reason?

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Given this thinking, the majority of my accounts are inactive, and yet my scores are comfortable.

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The drop was < 5 points and it rebounded within 1-2 months.  I still maintained 800+ with my *inactive* accounts as well so it's negligible.

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Come to think of it, most of my accounts have been "inactive" for so long that the time frame includes FICO 08 scores of 850. That doesn't take anything away from what you're saying, but reminds me of the cushion at the top of FICO 08 scores, which implies that an imperfect credit report can yield a perfect score without breaking a sweat.

[CreditDunce]

I don't know the answer to the exact question you are asking.   However, doesn't FICO exclude any inactive accounts from utilization?  If you are relying on unused TL's for utilization padding, you could loose the buffer.