topic Re: Fico score question in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Fico score question

CreditBob — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 16:09:16 GMT

Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.

Re: Fico score question

SouthJamaica — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 18:37:43 GMT

@CreditBob wrote:
Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.

A $13 balance is sufficient to avoid the all zero penalty, so long as it's on a bank card. It doesn't matter if the website you're looking at rounds it down to 0% in the consumer-facing interface.

Re: Fico score question

mgood — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 03:45:48 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
@CreditBob wrote:
Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.
A $13 balance is sufficient to avoid the all zero penalty, so long as it's on a bank card. It doesn't matter if the website you're looking at rounds it down to 0% in the consumer-facing interface.

Thanks. I've wondered that myself. Does one need at least 0.5% so it rounds up to 1% instead of down to 0%? Or is any amount ok? I wasn't sure if they were looking at all zero percentages or all zero dollars. I never got around to asking, so thanks to both of you.

Re: Fico score question

SouthJamaica — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 03:56:35 GMT

@mgood wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@CreditBob wrote:
Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.
A $13 balance is sufficient to avoid the all zero penalty, so long as it's on a bank card. It doesn't matter if the website you're looking at rounds it down to 0% in the consumer-facing interface.
Thanks. I've wondered that myself. Does one need at least 0.5% so it rounds up to 1% instead of down to 0%? Or is any amount ok? I wasn't sure if they were looking at all zero percentages or all zero dollars. I never got around to asking, so thanks to both of you.

The rounding doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the scoring algorithm.

I didn't say any amount is ok. It should be a balance of $10 or greater. Balances of less than that on occasion get reported to the bureaus as zero. I have seen reports in this forum that Discover actually drops very small balances.