How many CCs can report small balance without Fico degradation?

[Revelate]

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@xenon3030 wrote:

In the AZEO method, is there a recommendation to keep a balance on a specific CC? Should it be 1+ year old? Is there a specific connection between the age of this account and Fico scores?

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Doesn't matter.

[HeavenOhio]

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@xenon3030 wrote:

In the AZEO method, is there a recommendation to keep a balance on a specific CC? Should it be 1+ year old? Is there a specific connection between the age of this account and Fico scores?

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I ran into a four-point FICO8 drop when I allowed a retail card to be the only card reporting on Experian. I wasn't dinged on the other two bureaus. I got the points right back a few days later when I allowed a second card to report, and my score stayed the same when I went back to one "major" card reporting. At the time, I had seven cards, with five of them being less than six months old. I've since closed the retail cards, so I can't test this again. I have no data on this for other FICO scores.

But as Rev says, nothing about the card matters when it comes to overall utilization. For individial card utilization, just keep an appropriate balance for its limit.

[xenon3030]

Some months ago, I had 20 EX8 drop after I let all the CCs report 0 while I kept a small balance on AMEX PRG. A good lesson to use the AZEO correctly.

[909]

Data point:

- 7 credit cards (no store cards); 125,500 CL
- myFICO posted alerts today, one for TU, one for EX, for credit card balance drop of $61 (my BofA card went from $61 to $0) leaving one card with an $11 balance, i.e. the alert reflected AZEO with an $11 balance on a $125,500 CL.
- I also received myFICO alerts that Fico 8 changed: TU 829 >>> 835; EX 822 >>> 824 (EQ hasn't been moving between 3B pulls since July).

I don't always notice score changes when going to AZEO but these Fico 8 increases of 6 and 2 points were highly correlated with the shift to AZEO.