topic Re: Credit Card Activity in General Credit Topics

Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Mon, 04 May 2015 16:26:10 GMT

I try and pay off all my cards before the monthly closing date each month. If my balance is ZERO after payment and the reported balance is zero, how will "Credit Card Activity" show up and will that adversely affect my credit? Thank you.......

Re: Credit Card Activity

Scupra — Mon, 04 May 2015 20:14:16 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I try and pay off all my cards before the monthly closing date each month. If my balance is ZERO after payment and the reported balance is zero, how will "Credit Card Activity" show up and will that adversely affect my credit? Thank you.......

It won't negatively affect your score and lenders can see the payment amount made in that month. What will "hurt" is if you have all your cards reporting $0 bal every month. FICO likes to see one card at less than 10% util and all others at 0.

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Mon, 04 May 2015 21:55:49 GMT

Thank you. Advice taken!

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 02:22:01 GMT

@Scupra wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I try and pay off all my cards before the monthly closing date each month. If my balance is ZERO after payment and the reported balance is zero, how will "Credit Card Activity" show up and will that adversely affect my credit? Thank you.......
It won't negatively affect your score and lenders can see the payment amount made in that month. What will "hurt" is if you have all your cards reporting $0 bal every month. FICO likes to see one card at less than 10% util and all others at 0.

why will all reporting $0 hurt? i have read on over 20 different websites just the opposite. the rule is much simpler than that: the lower the utilization the better, and never surpass 30% total or on a single card. if you have a $1,000 limit card that reflects $10 every month but shows to be paid on time, it doesnt help or hurt any more than if it showed $0 because the payment still shows as on time. doesn't matter if it's 0. that shows self control. also, following your 10% rule, if that $1,000 card reported $100 on it every month and showing paid, that'll still look worse than if it said $0 and the payment was made. All that is reported is if the payment was made on time or not, the amount of the payment, the credit limit and the balance reflected on the account. the credit bureaus don't care if you use a card 100 times a month or once every year. they just wanna see the payment reported as on time and the utilization low. only the bank cares how often you actually use it so they can make their money.

if you still think i am incorrect, please direct me to a credited website and i will gladly retract my above statements

Re: Credit Card Activity

MarineVietVet — Tue, 05 May 2015 03:04:33 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Scupra wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I try and pay off all my cards before the monthly closing date each month. If my balance is ZERO after payment and the reported balance is zero, how will "Credit Card Activity" show up and will that adversely affect my credit? Thank you.......
It won't negatively affect your score and lenders can see the payment amount made in that month. What will "hurt" is if you have all your cards reporting $0 bal every month. FICO likes to see one card at less than 10% util and all others at 0.
why will all reporting $0 hurt? i have read on over 20 different websites just the opposite. the rule is much simpler than that: the lower the utilization the better, and never surpass 30% total or on a single card. if you have a $1,000 limit card that reflects $10 every month but shows to be paid on time, it doesnt help or hurt any more than if it showed $0 because the payment still shows as on time. doesn't matter if it's 0. that shows self control. also, following your 10% rule, if that $1,000 card reported $100 on it every month and showing paid, that'll still look worse than if it said $0 and the payment was made. All that is reported is if the payment was made on time or not, the amount of the payment, the credit limit and the balance reflected on the account. the credit bureaus don't care if you use a card 100 times a month or once every year. they just wanna see the payment reported as on time and the utilization low. only the bank cares how often you actually use it so they can make their money.

if you still think i am incorrect, please direct me to a credited website and i will gladly retract my above statements

How about a former administrator of these forums talking about CC Utilization?

Is he credited enough?

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 03:32:25 GMT

being an admin doesn't make anyone an expert... so no.

i admin the walking dead fan page on fb with thousands of members.. doesn't make me an expert.

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 03:36:47 GMT

@MarineVietVet wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Scupra wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I try and pay off all my cards before the monthly closing date each month. If my balance is ZERO after payment and the reported balance is zero, how will "Credit Card Activity" show up and will that adversely affect my credit? Thank you.......
It won't negatively affect your score and lenders can see the payment amount made in that month. What will "hurt" is if you have all your cards reporting $0 bal every month. FICO likes to see one card at less than 10% util and all others at 0.
why will all reporting $0 hurt? i have read on over 20 different websites just the opposite. the rule is much simpler than that: the lower the utilization the better, and never surpass 30% total or on a single card. if you have a $1,000 limit card that reflects $10 every month but shows to be paid on time, it doesnt help or hurt any more than if it showed $0 because the payment still shows as on time. doesn't matter if it's 0. that shows self control. also, following your 10% rule, if that $1,000 card reported $100 on it every month and showing paid, that'll still look worse than if it said $0 and the payment was made. All that is reported is if the payment was made on time or not, the amount of the payment, the credit limit and the balance reflected on the account. the credit bureaus don't care if you use a card 100 times a month or once every year. they just wanna see the payment reported as on time and the utilization low. only the bank cares how often you actually use it so they can make their money.

if you still think i am incorrect, please direct me to a credited website and i will gladly retract my above statements
How about a former administrator of these forums talking about CC Utilization?

Is he credited enough?

and by the way, i wasn't meaning to insinuate that i am more knowledgeable than any other. i was displaying my findings which took hours upon hours to conjur up so that's why i requested to be proven wrong from a credited source.

Re: Credit Card Activity

Scupra — Tue, 05 May 2015 04:38:25 GMT

You are correct in saying that the reported on time payment is what we want to show on our reports. Unfortunately FICO prefers that you carry a balance less than 9% one ONE card while ALL others report 0% util. This is to optimize your FICO score.

This link has a good explanation:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/tiny-card-balance-helps-credit-score.aspx

The other credible resource I would lead you to is the one you're on Take a look around and you will see plenty advice to report a small balance. I'm not saying you need to pay interest, just have to play the reporting game! I have also let a small balance report one month and not the next month and can confirm it makes a score impact. No offense taken, we all learn new things every day!

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 04:53:48 GMT

@Scupra wrote:
You are correct in saying that the reported on time payment is what we want to show on our reports. Unfortunately FICO prefers that you carry a balance less than 9% one ONE card while ALL others report 0% util. This is to optimize your FICO score.

This link has a good explanation:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/tiny-card-balance-helps-credit-score.aspx

The other credible resource I would lead you to is the one you're on Take a look around and you will see plenty advice to report a small balance. I'm not saying you need to pay interest, just have to play the reporting game! I have also let a small balance report one month and not the next month and can confirm it makes a score impact. No offense taken, we all learn new things every day!

i will read that. thanks for providing it

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 04:57:39 GMT

"In short, the lower a consumer's credit utilization, the better, but having a small balance is slightly better than having no balance at all," says Barry Paperno, consumer operations manager for FICO, the Minneapolis-based company that created the popular credit scoring formula.
^^ that's what i was talking about. the credible source! the man of fico lol. thanks for showing me. i wish you would have shown me in 3 more minutes so i could have started the day off learning something new :/

Re: Credit Card Activity

Scupra — Tue, 05 May 2015 05:35:17 GMT

Hahahaha!! 3 minutes? Close enough

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 05:39:53 GMT

If you pay them all when due & do not charge something else before the statement cuts, they will show zero balance. But it's not a good thing. It will drop your score. It's best to keep at least 1% on there. And anything you think might be lower than the 1%, will report as zero also. I aim for 2% just in case. That would be maybe a 1 point difference.

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 05:55:59 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
"In short, the lower a consumer's credit utilization, the better, but having a small balance is slightly better than having no balance at all," says Barry Paperno, consumer operations manager for FICO, the Minneapolis-based company that created the popular credit scoring formula.
^^ that's what i was talking about. the credible source! the man of fico lol. thanks for showing me. i wish you would have shown me in 3 more minutes so i could have started the day off learning something new :/

I would like to point out that the quote you chose from the bankrate article actually came from the article MarineVietVet posted - which you said wasn't credited enough.

Re: Credit Card Activity

MarineVietVet — Tue, 05 May 2015 06:53:59 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
"In short, the lower a consumer's credit utilization, the better, but having a small balance is slightly better than having no balance at all," says Barry Paperno, consumer operations manager for FICO, the Minneapolis-based company that created the popular credit scoring formula.
^^ that's what i was talking about. the credible source! the man of fico lol. thanks for showing me. i wish you would have shown me in 3 more minutes so i could have started the day off learning something new :/

I'm curious if you even went to the link I provided? Here is a quote from it:

"The closest we can come to a rule that applies universally to utilization percentages, whether considering a single card or all cards combined, is: The lower your credit utilization is, the better — but it’s better to have something (a percentage higher than 0) than nothing".

The person quoted here is Barry Paperno, the same man quoted in the bankrate article.

Re: Credit Card Activity

lg8302ch — Tue, 05 May 2015 07:18:57 GMT

...and OP if all this does not convince you....do the test yourself. There is a very interesting test you can do which will give you a nice idea what the article describes. If you have 5 accounts for example report all with 0 balance, next month report all with 1$ balance on each and then report 4 with 0 balance and 1 with 5$

I can guarantee you the result will be a nice surprise ....or maybe as a shocking result as it was for me..lol

Re: Credit Card Activity

Shogun — Tue, 05 May 2015 10:03:22 GMT

There is a bit of confusion in some of the posts. You don't get credit per se for on time monthly payments. That is what is expected. You get credit for the age of the account.

Re: Credit Card Activity

takeshi74 — Tue, 05 May 2015 12:22:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
i have read on over 20 different websites just the opposite. the rule is much simpler than that: the lower the utilization the better, and never surpass 30% total or on a single card. if you have a $1,000 limit card that reflects $10 every month but shows to be paid on time

As always, quality matters more than quantity. A negative impact from all zero balances and what you've stated above are not mutually exclusive nor opposites.

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 19:29:47 GMT

@ MarineVietVet - that quote i provided was directly from the link... i literally copied and pasted lol.

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Tue, 05 May 2015 20:29:42 GMT

There are numerous specialized FICO scores along with other types of industry scoring models, including some that measure credit capacity. Another poster already pointed out that creditors can see payment details. That include minimum due, amount of payment, credit limit, high limit, high balance, etc. So one could have a reduced score with say FICO 8 (common consumer scoring model) due to utilization (too high or too low) and yet in some credit profile / scoring models, rank very well.

Back in my better credit days, I never worried about utilization (at the time I didn't even know about the effect it had on scoring), and never had any trouble being granted plenty of credit with no need to ask for increases; were automatic and more than adequate for my needs with good terms and lots of 0% offers.

Not saying utilization doesn't matter, but rather show your cards some love and the rest will fall into place. Frequent, responsible usage will result in limit increases and new card offers, which in and of itself will help with utilization (more credit, easier it is to keep util low) going forward.

The biggest thing that can sink credit scores fast is a missed payment. Even a stray Late 30 (a misnomer, since some issuers will report a payment as Late 30 even one day after due date) is very damaging, though is recoverable over time; GW letters sometimes work to fix, and some better, quality cards will allow a late / missed payment every so often and not report it.

Re: Credit Card Activity

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2015 02:42:26 GMT

@Scupra wrote:
You are correct in saying that the reported on time payment is what we want to show on our reports. Unfortunately FICO prefers that you carry a balance less than 9% one ONE card while ALL others report 0% util. This is to optimize your FICO score.

This link has a good explanation:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/tiny-card-balance-helps-credit-score.aspx

The other credible resource I would lead you to is the one you're on Take a look around and you will see plenty advice to report a small balance. I'm not saying you need to pay interest, just have to play the reporting game! I have also let a small balance report one month and not the next month and can confirm it makes a score impact. No offense taken, we all learn new things every day!

Im confused as to how you can be at 1-9% AND avoid interest. MY due dates are all a few days before the statement closes. In order to avoid interest I would need to PIF before the due date. So that would mean i would need to used the card sometime between the due date and when the statement cuts to show a balance to the CRA. That seems like a very tight window to hit unless i am misunderstanding something in the process.