LOST 4 POINTS! How long do I have before I lose Points when paying a big purchase

[Anonymous]

Last month I lost 4 POINTS because I made an emergency purchase on my closing day and thus I had exactly ONE day to pay the entire bill , an since I only paid the minimum I lost 4 points

SO I would like to know do I have to pay all purchases on the same day or do I have the entire period from closing day to closing day each month and I wont be penalized with points.

For example yesterday march 9 was my closing date If a make a big purchase today do I have the entire month to pay the entire bill by april 9 and I wont be penalized with FICO Points?

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Last month I lost 4 POINTS because I made an emergency purchase on my closing day and thus I had exactly ONE day to pay the entire bill , an since I only paid the minimum I lost 4 points

SO I would like to know do I have to pay all purchases on the same day or do I have the entire period from closing day to closing day each month and I wont be penalized with points.

For example yesterday march 9 was my closing date If a make a big purchase today do I have the entire month to pay the entire bill by april 9 and I wont be penalized with FICO Points?

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1. 4 points is NOTHING in the greater scheme of things; it's an inconsequential change.

2. It has to do with "utilization" as reported in the statement. If you have a zero balance in the statement you have zero utilization, whether you paid it the day before or 25 days before.

3. MyFICO does not tell you what caused a score change.

4. Oh... and welcome to MyFICO. I see that was your very first post.

[MrsCHX]

It can be really hard when rebuilding to not obsess over every change.  4 points up or down really is nothing. And especially when it's due to utilization. 

Different card holders will do different things. Many advise that if you want $0 (or a certain amount) to report to pay the balance and then not use your card for 2-3 days on either side of your closing date. 

The idea being, if you use it before, you may not have time to post a payment before statement close. 

If you use it after, the card company may report the updated balance. This seems to be a little rare, but it does happen. I've had it happen on a few occasions. 

[oldman425]

Thanks MrsCHX!  I was going nuts this morning on how $25 on my Cap1 card cause my score to jump 10 points on EX while TU dropped 5 and EQ dropped 3.

[NRB525]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Last month I lost 4 POINTS because I made an emergency purchase on my closing day and thus I had exactly ONE day to pay the entire bill , an since I only paid the minimum I lost 4 points

SO I would like to know do I have to pay all purchases on the same day or do I have the entire period from closing day to closing day each month and I wont be penalized with points.

For example yesterday march 9 was my closing date If a make a big purchase today do I have the entire month to pay the entire bill by april 9 and I wont be penalized with FICO Points?

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The timing of your purchase was close enough to the statement cut date that it looks to you like that purchase triggered a score change.

The score change was the result of showing that balance (apparently a large purchase) on your monhtly credit card statement.

The FICO score is not monitoring each purchase you make every day to determine whether a score change is necessary for that day.

The 4 points is rather small, and if you want to catch up with ensuring this card statement is zero for the next statement balance, then the score should recover most or all of that back. Utilization factors in FICO scoring are temporary, are point-in-time based on the statement print.

The utilization is not point-in-time each day, looking at your actual current balance that you and the credit card company know you owe, only on the monthly statement balance.

[Anonymous]

I've run into this many times in the past with several different creditors... Discover, Amex, etc. where I PIF say 3 days before I'm required to do so (before they report) and I then make a purchase a day or two later and whatever that new purchase amount is ends up being the dollar amount reported.  So, basically I report a balance on a card that my intentions were to report a $0 balance.  I used to micromanage my various cards more and make certain that only 1 reported a balance, but over time I realized that on my profile it didn't matter how many of my cards report a balance as even if 100% of them report balances my score stays the same (all small balances).  My overall credit limits are high enough to utilization is a non-factor if any of my cards report a balance (aggregate always being 1%-4% whether it's 1 card reporting or all of them) so in terms of scoring my score never changes due to utilization either.

So, in a nutshell what I've found is that since these small utilization changes don't matter (scoring wise) and the number of cards reporting balances doesn't matter, I no longer have any reason to micromanage my cards and their balances with respect to FICO scoring.