Can Someone Explain This To Me?

[Anonymous]

Without bothering with the math on this end, seems like you should pay off or transfer balances on the small cards to $0 to get your 50% no balances, then play with the big balance and transfer enough so the other cards are all at or about 10% to get that utilization down since it is almost 50% (the 23k card).

[tonsers]

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@Anonymous wrote:

missed the cutoff for Chevron, they report EOM every other month so they are now an 'emergency only' card

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What does EOM mean? I tried to look under common abbreviations but it's not there. I have a Chevron card too and was wondering why it still shows a balance sometimes even when I pay before the statement. Thanks LadyScarlet - you're my hero today!

[Anonymous]

Accounting/business term EOM= end-of-month

[tonsers]

Aha - got it! Thanks!

[Anonymous]

masdeocho,

Thanks very much for the info and calculations!  BTW, I have several calculators but it's no good if you don't know anything besides add, subtract and multiply.

I am going to pay off the ones with the small balances, wait a couple of months and see if my scores go up (that is, if they all report as they should)!

Thanks again.  I suppose there's still no point in paying more than the minimum as far as helping your score.  That's life.

[haulingthescoreup]

QueenB, the balances that you listed, are they the ones that appear on the statements, that you then go ahead and pay, or are they the balances remaining after you pay? Just checking, because if those are the balances left after you pay, then you have a higher util reporting.

In most cases, the figure reported to the credit bureaus is the balance listed on the statement. Anything paid after that is great financially, but it doesn't help your util.

[Anonymous]

hauling, those balances are what's currently owed right now.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

hauling, those balances are what's currently owed right now.

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Does that mean that your statements showed a higher balance? (Don't know where you are in your current payment cycle.)

If you have a CC with a $1000 CL, and on your statement the balance is $600, and you pay it down to $100 as soon as you see the statement, then you may think that your util is 10% ($100 divided by $1000), but for credit scoring, it's actually 60% ($600 divided by $1000.) If that's what's happening, it will definitely hold down your scores.

Your friend may think that you're crazy for paying a week before the due date, but s/he will think I'm crazier when I say to pay 4 or 5 days before the statement date. That way, a much lower balance reports to the credit bureaus, and so that's the figure that's used to calculate your util. You can get some amazing score jumps that way.

It can be kind of a PITA to do this all the time, though, so many people just do it as a tune-up before a big app like a mortgage. I've gotten used to it, though, and I now just PIF all but one of my cards soon after a charge pops up on line. I let one show a small balance on the statement and then PIF it too. I'm used to it now, so it's not a hassle. And I know that people say that you lose the grace period for interest this way, but it's not like my money would be earning some sort of fantastic interest elsewhere.