I've read a lot on here about maximizing your scores by having one report a small balance and the rest report as zero. I am at the end of paying my cards down from 5500$ to ~0$.
I only had 2 cards (got a new one yesterday, unreported).I let my chase freedom report with a small balance, 110$ which is roughly 3% of its 2500$ limit, 2% of my overall 5500$ total.
My plan was to pay off my chase Amazon entirely, which I did. The only problem with that is that 9$ in interest posted before cut, so it didn't go through at zero. Still, it had been an 800$ balance the statement before so I got the following boosts:
TU 680 -> 689
EQ 675 -> 674
EX who knows. Mine rarely updates here.
The following day, I pushed a 10$ payment from my bank account. I expected to get a small boat since I would have one card at zero and one with a 3% balance.
MyFico picked up the change, but it didn't improve my scores. It looks like that 8$ balance being 0.26 percent counted as zero to begin with.
Point being, if your interest posts and keeps you from reporting a card at zero, I think if it's under 1% of its total, it has the same effect.
Anyone else experience something similar?
