topic Re: Non-AZEO Question in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Non-AZEO Question

j615 — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 21:36:51 GMT

I currently have 4 revolvers and 1 charge card.

I only carry 1 revolver (Chase FU) and the charge card (Amex Gold) in my wallet, which are my primary and heavily used cards. I let these 2 cards report a statement balance, then PIF before due date.

My other 3 revolvers (Citi DC, Amex CM, and Wells Fargo Visa) are SD, but they get a charge posted on them monthly. DC and CM get about $10 each and WF about $200. I currently pay these to zero before statement cuts.

Now, where I’m getting at is that I prefer not to worry about paying my other 3 revolvers down before statement cut, and just worry about paying before due date. Any experience on how much this will affect FICO to allow *all* cards to report? I do understand the Gold card won’t factor in and utilization in general has no memory, but I also am more comfortable knowing I can app for anything at any time (although not frequently) without having to wait for scores to recover.

March 27th EX FICO 8: 782
EQ & TU usually pretty comparable

Re: Non-AZEO Question

HeavenOhio — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 21:54:53 GMT

With your current 782 score, you’re likely to be fine. No harm in testing. If you don’t like the result, you don’t have to do it again.

Keep in mind that multiple cards with positive balances are much harder on “mortgage” scores. If you have an important credit application coming up, you'll probably want to zero some of them out.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:50:02 GMT

@HeavenOhio wrote:
With your current 782 score, you’re likely to be fine. No harm in testing. If you don’t like the result, you don’t have to do it again.

Keep in mind that multiple cards with positive balances are much harder on “mortgage” scores. If you have an important credit application coming up, you'll probably want to zero some of them out.

Mic-drop

Re: Non-AZEO Question

UpperNwGuy — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 01:05:10 GMT

If you pay all your cards in full after the statement cuts, it really doesn't matter how many statements cut with a balance.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

SouthJamaica — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 15:53:46 GMT

@j615 wrote:
I currently have 4 revolvers and 1 charge card.

I only carry 1 revolver (Chase FU) and the charge card (Amex Gold) in my wallet, which are my primary and heavily used cards. I let these 2 cards report a statement balance, then PIF before due date.

My other 3 revolvers (Citi DC, Amex CM, and Wells Fargo Visa) are SD, but they get a charge posted on them monthly. DC and CM get about $10 each and WF about $200. I currently pay these to zero before statement cuts.

Now, where I’m getting at is that I prefer not to worry about paying my other 3 revolvers down before statement cut, and just worry about paying before due date. Any experience on how much this will affect FICO to allow *all* cards to report? I do understand the Gold card won’t factor in and utilization in general has no memory, but I also am more comfortable knowing I can app for anything at any time (although not frequently) without having to wait for scores to recover.

March 27th EX FICO 8: 782
EQ & TU usually pretty comparable

If you're comfortable paying after statement cuts but before due date, then by all means go ahead with that. FICO 8 will ding you a little bit but not too much.

But if you apply for a mortgage, go down to 1 card reporting a balance. The mortgage scores are very sensitive to number of cards reporting a balance.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

j615 — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 02:13:33 GMT

Hmm. I guess I’m confused a bit now from the previous replies. I always thought if there was a balance printed on the monthly statement, it would count as a balance being reported? Am I getting this wrong... or just not understanding it?

I closed my mortgage last year with best rate possible and won’t be buying again anytime soon, so good that I don’t need to worry about mortgage score right now. But it’s good info to know for the future. Thank you all!

Re: Non-AZEO Question

HeavenOhio — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 02:17:15 GMT

It should be added that "mortgage" scores are actually old classic scores. We frequently call them mortgage scores because they're the ones used in the mortgage industry.

They can still be used for non-mortgage lending decisions. For instance, Capital One uses the Equifax 04 classic score for application approval and limit increase decisions.

In a recent thread, we found that older classic scores ("mortgage" scores) are frequently much lower than one's FICO 8. If you think one of these scores might factor into a lending decision, it's probably a good idea to have most cards (or ideally all but one card) reporting zero.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

HeavenOhio — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 02:19:52 GMT

@j615 wrote:
Hmm. I guess I’m confused a bit now from the previous replies. I always thought if there was a balance printed on the monthly statement, it would count as a balance being reported? Am I getting this wrong... or just not understanding it?

You're understanding it correctly. In the great majority of cases, the balance on the monthly statement is the number that's reported. There are niche exceptions. US Bank reports the balance as of the last day of the month. And in addition to reporting the statement balance, Chase will report zero whenever you pay to zero.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 06:00:59 GMT

Our OP indicated in his initial post that two of his cards always reported a balance and three always reported $0. ("I let these 2 cards report a statement balance, then PIF before due date.")

The OP is confused because SouthJ missed that and told him that he has a penalty for all of his cards reporting a balance.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 06:06:31 GMT

@HeavenOhio wrote:
With your current 782 score, you’re likely to be fine. No harm in testing. If you don’t like the result, you don’t have to do it again.

This is a really important point. Anytime you have a way of answering "what will this do to my score" by looking to see what this does to your score, you should prefer that to asking people to predict what they believe it will do. (As long as the test doesn't do any lasting harm to your score.)

Re: Non-AZEO Question

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 06:13:47 GMT

@UpperNwGuy wrote:
If you pay all your cards in full after the statement cuts, it really doesn't matter how many statements cut with a balance.

Hi UNWG! Can you clarify what you mean? Are you saying that (for example) if a person had 10 credit cards on his report and nothing else, then whether he had 1 card with a small statement balance or 10 cards with a small balance he'd have the same score?

That's untrue for all FICO models, and for some models the scoring difference can be quite substantial.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

SouthJamaica — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 15:52:59 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Our OP indicated in his initial post that two of his cards always reported a balance and three always reported $0. ("I let these 2 cards report a statement balance, then PIF before due date.")

The OP is confused because SouthJ missed that and told him that he has a penalty for all of his cards reporting a balance.

Thanks for catching my mistake @Anonymous I will update my earlier post.

Re: Non-AZEO Question

SouthJamaica — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 15:55:06 GMT

@j615 wrote:
Hmm. I guess I’m confused a bit now from the previous replies. I always thought if there was a balance printed on the monthly statement, it would count as a balance being reported? Am I getting this wrong... or just not understanding it?

I closed my mortgage last year with best rate possible and won’t be buying again anytime soon, so good that I don’t need to worry about mortgage score right now. But it’s good info to know for the future. Thank you all!

My apologies @j615 I had misread your original post, and thought you were paying everything before the statements cut. I've edited my earlier post.