After seeing the significant score drop (21-28pts on my FICO9 and up to 16pts on FICO8) I had last month for not being AZEO with my 2 cards (10% and 6% individual utilization, 9% aggregate), I'm getting back on the AZEO game this month. Discover is my 0 balance and Capital One is what I'm lettting report. And while I know for everything except 10T it only matters for a month, I'm concerned about the score hit I may take this month because of pending transactions not posting until my closing date. My statement closes on Tuesday (7/26) and none of my transactions from Friday (7/22) or Saturday have posted yet so I'm not able to pay them (though when I called this morning I was told all but one $3 transaction would be posting this afternoon and I would have time to pay it by 8pm (local time) for it to back post to today tomorrow...this was clearly BS as none of them have posted yet). Since they're not posting and I won't have a payment till tomorrow, it won't be till Wed that they back post my payment to Tuesday and I'll end up reporting a balance close to 20% (my available credit changes immediately but my stated balance doesn't change till the next day). I'm really trying at minimum to be below 9% or better yet 5% but also don't want to have to avoid using a credit card for days at a time. Last month my capital one statement closed on a Saturday and all my Friday transactions posted on that saturday. With me having a thin profile on a dirty scorecard the differences in utilization tank my scores to where I worry it could make a difference in a borderline approval or CL if approved when applying for another card (I want a Savor One in the near future). Maybe I'm way too worried about this right now but I hate to see my score drop when I'm yet to pay any interest since starting my rebuild. I wonder if they play fast and loose with when things post and don't post near the closing date? I learned last month with Discover that any transaction initiated on the the closing day will get reported even if pending. I had 2 small transactions one at 10pm and another at 11pm on the closing saturday that didn't post till Tuesday but were reported despite a $0 statement balance.
Update: The pending transactions posted at midnight and a few minutes later I made a payment that posted to my account around 10pm on closing so it may have worked out ok as my statement cut with 2.2% utilization. Just waiting on them to report now.
This is why it's good to have at least 2 cards with their closing dates spread out at least a week so you can switch between them when you're trying to avoid having pending balances near the end.
Another option is to "push" a payment from your checking account to Cap One ahead of time (maybe 5-7 business days in advance) if you know you'll have some upcoming spend the following week, though I know this option may not be very practical.
I have 2 cards and both have closing dates that are often on the same day. Discover closes on the 25th every month and Cap One is the 25th, 26th or 23rd (24th in leap years). I may see if I can move the discover up a few days earlier. I'm a bit leery of moving any of them the other direction as my myfico subscription updates on the 3rd of the month and I want the most current info shown.
@DSTforlife wrote:do they not allow you to pay for pending charges even though they haven't posted? I know Amex and Chase allows for this, but i'm not sure about other banks.
Capital one won't let me go past 10% over the posted balance and only from my desktop log in. Can't go over on the app or over the phone.