All Cards 0% but one <9% Method

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I'm curious to know what the approximate score improvement would be by only letting one card report a <9% balance, as opposed to letting more than one card report a small/trivial balance. 

---

Well if nobody replies with anything definite, I'll let you know next month.  

---

Nice! Are you documenting it in a thread?  I'll subscribe if so. 

---

Could just document it here.  I'll document my utilization for the last three months.  Discover FICO score in those corresponding months and when my most recent new accounts and inquiries were reported.  Just to give everyone an idea of where I'm at overall.  I'll post all of that up and if you want I could private message you when I update.  My FICO on Discover updates around the 9th each month.

[elim]

I always reported a small balance on all cards (never over 9% total UTIL) and always PIF...   just before apping I let 1 card report 1% and let the others report 0% and I got a very nice score bump on all 3 B's.

now i'm back to letting small statements cut and scores are down from new accounts.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I'm curious to know what the approximate score improvement would be by only letting one card report a <9% balance, as opposed to letting more than one card report a small/trivial balance. 

---

Well if nobody replies with anything definite, I'll let you know next month.  

---

Nice! Are you documenting it in a thread?  I'll subscribe if so. 

---

Could just document it here.  I'll document my utilization for the last three months.  Discover FICO score in those corresponding months and when my most recent new accounts and inquiries were reported.  Just to give everyone an idea of where I'm at overall.  I'll post all of that up and if you want I could private message you when I update.  My FICO on Discover updates around the 9th each month.

---

Great!  Definitely PM me when you've got an update.  I'm sub'd to this thread as well.  

As for your letting more than one card report a balance, I'm just curious what your overall util is gonna look like?

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I'm curious to know what the approximate score improvement would be by only letting one card report a <9% balance, as opposed to letting more than one card report a small/trivial balance. 

---

Well if nobody replies with anything definite, I'll let you know next month.  

---

Nice! Are you documenting it in a thread?  I'll subscribe if so. 

---

Could just document it here.  I'll document my utilization for the last three months.  Discover FICO score in those corresponding months and when my most recent new accounts and inquiries were reported.  Just to give everyone an idea of where I'm at overall.  I'll post all of that up and if you want I could private message you when I update.  My FICO on Discover updates around the 9th each month.

---

Great!  Definitely PM me when you've got an update.  I'm sub'd to this thread as well.  

As for your letting more than one card report a balance, I'm just curious what your overall util is gonna look like?

---

When I had my cards reporting balances their individual utilization was seldom ever above 10% and subsequently my overall was never above 7%.  I have $35,000 available credit and the Cap1 card that I'll be reporting the <9% balance on has a $3,000 limit.  So overall that will put my overall utilization at ~0.008%.  Lol not even 1%!  I will include all of that in my summary.  Maybe see what it does for two months.  The more the merrier, right.

[Anonymous]

Following this thread.

[masscredit]

I used to think it was less than 9% of the total of all credit card lines together. Then I found that it's less than 9% of a single card's credit line. I was playing with it the other way before. 6-7% of my total credit lines equalled about 30% of the one card that I was letting report. I let it get down into the single digits for that one card's CL recently, That got me a few points.

Last month I had four cards reporting for a little while. I changed which single card was reporting so those two overlapped for two weeks. then Cap 1 changed my membership fees early. They did it at the close of the statements (both on the same day).  All of that combined gave me a 28 point loss. I had a new car loan around the same time so that might have been good for a few of those points. For the cards that I swapped, after the second one reported $0.00, I gained 23 points.  Didn't see any gain after the two Cap 1 cards reported zero. 

There is some good info in this thread too -  http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Any-Difference-When-UTIL-is-Below-9/td-p/...

[Anonymous]

I found this interesting. It seems to indicate max points are assigned to a balance of less than $100 on the one reporting card. From fico:

[Anonymous]

---

@jroc556 wrote:

I found this interesting. It seems to indicate max points are assigned to a balance of less than $100 on the one reporting card. From fico:

---

Is this really accurate?  Or am I missing something here...according to that chart:

• I should expect a 50 point increase when my 1.5 year old late payment falls off (due to GW success last week)
• Dropping to < $100 util is a 15 point increase (seems very generous) 
• If I have over 4 inquiries and wait six months without a single inquiry, my score should increase by 50 points
• Anyone with more than 3 credit cards will never see an 850 score, since having 3 cards is a 10 point increase above having 4+ (there's no way that's right)

[Anonymous]

You'll note that it says "Sample Model." It's functionally a FAKO chart. 

[Anonymous]

I'm thinking the points in the chart don't equal full points on your score. Just an example of how the internals of the code works I would guess.