topic Re: The AZEO Method... in Understanding FICO® Scoring

The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 22:51:32 GMT

Someone please give me a better understanding of the AZEO method. I have 3 cards. From reading, I'm supposed to keep two at zero and allow one to report below an 8% balance. What is confusing is the credit reporting date, the time I'm supposed to pay, and the date of reporting by the bereaus. I hope I'm explaining that correctly...

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:27:44 GMT

Reporting date varies by bank. MOST report on the statement date, some report on the 1st. Use a credit monitoring site to know for sure, or post which banks you have so we can help you with that.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 03:32:38 GMT

I have a Discover IT, CapOne Quicksilver, and CapOne

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 04:07:51 GMT

I encourage you to pull your TU and EQ reports with Credit Karma. They will list the Date Reported for each of your cards. Compare that with the date of your statements. Then you will know.

AZEO is not something you have to do every month. Only in the run up to when you need your credit score to be its highest, e.g. in the 40 days before you apply for a loan or a card.

Re: The AZEO Method...

iheartwings — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 05:23:53 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have a Discover IT, CapOne Quicksilver, and CapOne

I don’t know if this will be helpful for you. You can adjust the payment dates for all three of your cards to be at or about the same date. My current Discover and previous Capital One cards all had a due date on the 15th of the month. Discover’s statement closing date is always five days after my due date (The 20th), and they report within 1 to 2 days after closing. CapOne would close 4 days after the due date (The 19th) and report 1 to 2 days after closing. The nice thing about your cards is that the closing date is the same day each month. American Express and Citibank, on the other hand, have a minimum number of days within each statement period, so the closing date floats over a 1 to 3 day period.

For me, it just seem to make things a little easier when juggling utilization.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 06:55:31 GMT

OP, while you didn't really say in your initial post, one thing that should be clarified is that you don't need to "keep" 2 cards at $0, you just need to ensure they report $0. From the language with which you wrote, it almost suggested that you wouldn't even use those 2 cards at all, which definitely doesn't need to be the case.

The advice about at finding out when your creditors report is solid. For my, my Capital One payment due date is the 14th and my statement cuts on the 17th. Capital One usually reports to the bureaus for me on the 17th, although sometimes on the 16th, which is a bit odd as the statement period still has a day before it ends. Anyway, if this were your AZEO card that you want to leave a small balance on, you'd want to PIF on the 13th-14th (at the latest) your total balance, not just your previous statement balance, less the small amount you want to allow to report. For example your previous statement balance may be $40 and you may have a current balance of $240 if you used the card for another $200 in purchases for the cycle. On your payment due date (or a day or two before) you'd want to pay $235 for example, leaving a $5 behind to report. Keep in mind any charges between that payment and the statement close date will be added... so if between the 14th and 17th you spend $100, you'd report $105 instead of just the $5 you were planning on. I'm not sure what the limit is on the card you're planning to report a balance with, but if it's low you may need to watch your swipes during this few day period as it could potentially put you above 8.99% reported on that card. Hopefully that makes sense.

Re: The AZEO Method...

grower1 — Thu, 17 May 2018 01:06:15 GMT

I've been trying AZEO since learning of it here on the forum. Does this look about right? My next goal is to grow my CLs on my cards.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Thu, 17 May 2018 01:44:44 GMT

Yup, that above is exactly what you're after with AZEO.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 15:21:31 GMT

i just saw your posting.

i am VERY new on here.

i noticed that your American Express card was being reported. I thought AMEX does not report to the credit agencies. I am correct? Is this perhaps a different type of AMEX card?

thank you

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 15:48:28 GMT

Amex does report to the Big Three credit bureaus.

But perhaps without intending it, you saw something that the rest of the more experienced people here missed (including myself). Namely that, if a person is using an Amex as his one card that reports a positive balance, he needs to make sure that it is a true credit card, rather than an Amex charge card, like the Amex Green, Amex Platinum, etc.

An Amex charge card will be ignored by FICO 8 in its utilization calculation. Therefore a person should choose a different card to make sure that FICO "sees" that you have a true credit card with a positive balance.

Amex makes a lot of true credit cards, like the Amex Blue Cash for example (and many others). These are fine.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Thomas_Thumb — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 16:33:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
i just saw your posting.

i am VERY new on here.

i noticed that your American Express card was being reported. I thought AMEX does not report to the credit agencies. I am correct? Is this perhaps a different type of AMEX card?

thank you

The penalty does not specifically relate to AZ cards reporting. It is for: "No recent revolving account activity". AMEX charge cards are not included in revolving account activity (Fico 4, Fico 8 and Fico 9 models). For some people AU cards are not included either (Fico 8 and Fico 9 models). Others have reported having a store card excluded as well.

So potentially you could report AZE3 with an AU credit card, AMEX charge card and a store card showing a balance and still experience the: No recent revolving account activity penalty. Store cards appear to be a mixed bag on how they are treated.

If one wants to play AZEO, the card reporting should ideally be a personal card (not AU) and be a known revolver (Visa, Mastercard, Discover card, cobranded store card or AMEX credit card). Not sure about Diner's Club and some other odd cards.

*** Although confusing, AZ is optimal for the # accounts with balance scoring factor. The score drop which happens as a consequence of AZ relates to a completely different scoring attribute - lack of recent revolving activity.

Re: The AZEO Method...

SouthJamaica — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 23:51:29 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have a Discover IT, CapOne Quicksilver, and CapOne

Each of those reports the statement balance.

So all you have to do is let one of the 3 report a small balance before you pay it off, while you pay off the others prior to the statement date.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Fri, 24 May 2019 12:36:39 GMT

I am still learning but I was made to understand by calling my cards that the due date and the date they report are also two different dates which may or may not be helpful info.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Fri, 24 May 2019 14:15:54 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I am still learning but I was made to understand by calling my cards that the due date and the date they report are also two different dates which may or may not be helpful info.

Right. Here's an example, drawn from how a typical credit card works. Suppose you have a card that prints its statement on the 2nd of every month. That is the Statement Date.

On the date that the statement prints, the CC issuer will report the statement balance (aka the Amount Owed at the top of the statement) to the three credit bureaus. This is the Date Reported.

Thus, the Date Reported and the Statement Date are (for almost all CC issuers) the same date.

Imagine in this example that you have a statement balance of $400 on May 2. That $400 has been reported to all three bureaus.

Roughly 25 days after the Statement Date is the DUE DATE. The CC issuer is giving you a "grace period" of about 25 days to make a payment on that $400. If you pay the full $400 during that period, then you will not owe any interest. Paying that full $400 is called Paying In Full or PIF. Note that when I person is PIF-ing he often is NOT paying the card to zero. In this example, if you paid $400 on May 15, your card might will have new charges that have brought the balance to (say) $500.

So to recap, the Due Date always refers to how long you had to make a payment on the last statement. The Due Date has nothing to do with the date the CC issuer reports to the three bureaus.

Re: The AZEO Method...

SouthJamaica — Fri, 24 May 2019 15:15:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have a Discover IT, CapOne Quicksilver, and CapOne

OK. All 3 of those report the statement balance.

So for optimal revolving utilization, all you need to do is pay 2 of them down to zero before the statement date, and let 1 of them report a small balance which you then pay off shortly after the statement date.

The primary purpose of AZEO is to make sure you're not hurting yourself on revolving utilization across all FICO scoring models. AZEO has more of a positive impact on your mortgage scores than it does on your FICO 8's and 9's.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:04 GMT

Hi. Brand new to this forum.

I have groomed my credit to the Exceptional level (some months even a perfect score). I just saw AZEO mentioned on this forum. The card I use most is a Citi 2x card with a $65k available line. Some months the balance gets rather high & I make interum payments to keep the balance at a resonable level. This month I paid the entire balance before the statement cut off. Because I haven't used any other credit cards this cycle, my revolving credit usage this month will be 0 - I never knew that this could be a bad thing. How many points can I expect to lose?

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:32:18 GMT

Welcome to the forum. You'd expect to lose maybe 15-20. Those points will immediately return once one of your cards again reports a small balance.

As an aside, starting your own thread in the future if you have a question will likely yield you more exposure and responses relative to bringing an old thread back to life.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:27:57 GMT

Yikes! But great that it's a quick fix. I think I might have freaked if I saw that drop without knowing why it happened.

Thanks for the quick reply & the posting advice.

Re: The AZEO Method...

grower1 — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 17:09:46 GMT

I was expecting a score drop today and it came right on time. I downgraded my BCP to the non AF version and Amex gave me a partial refund for the Annual fee. (I didn't know this at the time of the downgrade). Since this is my AZEO card that I carry a small balance on my score tanked. Once they refunded me, it was too short of notice for me to prevent the damage because the statement closed at the same time. TransUnion is slower to report, that will happen in the next few days. I will quickly correct this, by letting a small balance report on another card.

Re: The AZEO Method...

Anonymous — Sun, 05 Jul 2020 03:05:24 GMT

What credit monitoring system is this ?

@grower1 wrote:
I've been trying AZEO since learning of it here on the forum. Does this look about right? My next goal is to grow my CLs on my cards.