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Negotiating # of cards with balance when dealing with Charge (Open) Cards

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ficope
New Member

Negotiating # of cards with balance when dealing with Charge (Open) Cards

Hi all,

 

First post!

 

To start, this site has been invaluable to me and I am very thankful to everyone who has indirectly helped me via sharing their knowledge. Thanks a lot!

 

With that being said, I have a question that I have not yet been able to find the answer to. I have read numerous accounts of people seeing a slight increase in their credit scores when only carrying a balance on one credit card, while leaving the others at 0% at the time of reporting. However, how does one properly apply this methodology when juggling credit cards and charge cards? As I understand it, the credit bureaus do not calculate open acount (charge) balances in the overall reported utilization %. I realize there are some exceptions such as the TU98, but in general this seems to be the consensus. So, does this mean that if you have a charge card in your credit mix then you are naturally excluded from using this approach?

 

In my case, I have one credit card (Freedom) and one charge card (AEX Gold). If I were to carry a 1-9% balance on the Freedom and a 0% balance on the Gold, then I'm assuming that all would be well. Yet, if I carried a 1-9% balance on the Gold and a 0% balance on the Freedom, wouldn't my overall utilization % be reported as 0% due to the nature of open account reporting?

 

Any thoughts?

 

Thanks!

Michael

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1 REPLY 1
vanillabean
Valued Contributor

Re: Negotiating # of cards with balance when dealing with Charge (Open) Cards

Util matters, but util is not all. Yes, if the Gold is >0% and the Freedom is 0%, your FICO util is 0%. Still, your score will be impacted, if the Gold balance is something like $10,000. But it beats the other way around!

Message 2 of 2
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