topic Re: Positive Balance in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Positive Balance

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 19:12:23 GMT

Quick question, how will a positive balance reporting affect my score? Increase or decrease, I overpaid by 64 cents. Will it report that or just report a $0 balance?

Re: Positive Balance

NRB525 — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 19:30:06 GMT

It will report zero.

An interesting test if someone wants to try would be to pay all accounts to zero, which we know will negatively impact score, and overpay or push a CC account to a credit status. Probably the same result, 30 points or so negative, but the entertainment value to the rest of us would be priceless.

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 19:41:29 GMT

Are you not entertained! Lol, we’ll i can’t afford the test, maybe when my scores are higher I’ll give it a run

But thank you for answering that

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 19:39:42 GMT

If you overpaid then you likely have a negative balance. The act of overpaying could not in itself cause you to have a positive balance.

Assuming you meant negative balance, a negative balance is reported as zero by all CC isuers.

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 19:43:05 GMT

Thanks CGID, the CSR for the company told me it was a positive balance so I just reused the terminology. However, what you said is what I meant

Re: Positive Balance

Thomas_Thumb — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 20:42:05 GMT

Too bad overpayments don't report as negative.

That could help maintain low aggregate utilization .

Re: Positive Balance

RonM21 — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 00:12:52 GMT

@NRB525 wrote:
It will report zero.

An interesting test if someone wants to try would be to pay all accounts to zero, which we know will negatively impact score, and overpay or push a CC account to a credit status. Probably the same result, 30 points or so negative, but the entertainment value to the rest of us would be priceless.

I'm down for entertainment. Only I will not be supplying it. And Op, when I somehow have overpaid before I have had the Lender send me a check for that difference on rare occasion. One time Walmart sent me a check for 67 cents lol.

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 01:49:53 GMT

@RonM21 wrote:
@NRB525 wrote:
It will report zero.

An interesting test if someone wants to try would be to pay all accounts to zero, which we know will negatively impact score, and overpay or push a CC account to a credit status. Probably the same result, 30 points or so negative, but the entertainment value to the rest of us would be priceless.
I'm down for entertainment. Only I will not be supplying it. And Op, when I somehow have overpaid before I have had the Lender send me a check for that difference on rare occasion. One time Walmart sent me a check for 67 cents lol.

Thats crazy, but I'll have spent it before then. I'm just glad it will have no negative effects outside of a 0% uti showing.

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 02:07:38 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm just glad it will have no negative effects outside of a 0% uti showing.

You have 5 cards. Just for clarity, there is no penalty for one card reporting $0. Only if all cards are reporting $0.

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 02:16:40 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I'm just glad it will have no negative effects outside of a 0% uti showing.
You have 5 cards. Just for clarity, there is no penalty for one card reporting $0. Only if all cards are reporting $0.

I understand, I'm saying that in the reference of "cards showing usage" (from another thread debating azeo vs aggregate utility). Four of my cards will be at 0% when this one reports, except for the one I have at 55%, which I plan to lower this month. I'll bring that to below 8% and keep it there (I need the discipline)

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 02:23:05 GMT

OK bud. When you wrote....

I'm just glad it will have no negative effects outside of a 0% uti showing.

I assumed you were saying...

I'm just glad it will have no negative effects outside of the negative effect of 0% uti showing.

I was letting you know that there is in fact no negative scoring effect connected with an individual card going to 0%. Best of luck...

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 02:30:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
OK bud. When you wrote....

I'm just glad it will have no negative effects outside of a 0% uti showing.

I assumed you were saying...

I'm just glad it will have no negative effects outside of the negative effect of 0% uti showing.

I was letting you know that there is in fact no negative scoring effect connected with an individual card going to 0%. Best of luck...

No disagreement here, and you assumed correctly. I was encompassing what some would see as a negative after reading the discussion on having 0% uti could cause them to decrease your limits if you're not using the card. I felt that someone would say "well that 0% could be a negative also if..". Got ahead of myself..

Re: Positive Balance

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 02:31:14 GMT

While it probably goes without saying, it's worth noting that when saying you have a card at 0% [reported utilization] what really matters is that it's at $0. While this may seem like the same thing (and it is) there is a ton of CMS software out there that will round small balances down and that has passed the misperception on to many that the FICO algorithm may therefore "round down" when considering a balance/percentage. This of course isn't true and any non-zero reported balance constitutes 1% utilization. I'm quite sure that everyone part of this discussion is aware of that, but others that may come across this thread in the near and distant future may not be.