Discover Current Balance & Statement Balance

[CreditInspired]

Congrats on the APR reduction @cival and kudos to @saeren for suggesting it.

[NRB525]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@NRB525 wrote:
I would suggest your situation is “mid-app” rather than typical gardening months. In the long run, this sort of micro management makes me want to close cards that are not reliable.

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Yeah and I’m probably worrying about nothing to be honest but I have set up my wallet how I want it now. 

Sync seems to take AA when people suddenly charge up too much of their cards. I’m carrying $2,963 if NFCU reports to the credit bureaus before Disco, $2,298 after Disco reports, out of $50,750 total so it seems very unlikely for me but either way, I have had my scores go from good to fair as a result of paying off that personal loan so I would like to optimize scoring as much as I can without adding another loan (doing so would drop my AAoA under 2 years). 

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Actually, my opinion is you are exactly setting yourself up for the sort of AA you fear. By keeping your card usage, your significant balances a secret from other banks, by not letting large balances report naturally and be visible historically, the risk I see is that at some point your management of reported balances slips up and a large balance or several appears. It is at that time that these skittish banks seem to become alarmed. 

I take my my lumps in short term score by letting balances report. I have been through numerous CLD, balance chasing, and card closing situations in the past when I had large balances. Those are only indicative of the bank reducing risk, and I do not blame the banks for those Adverse Actions, but now that I have worked through that with no missed payments I expect my banks to realize that they will see significant balances from time to time. 

I completely understand your concern with your current situation and rebuilding efforts. My suggestion for the long term is to let your banks see your ability to borrow from other banks and pay it off. If, in the long run Sync or Barclays cannot stomache your balances reporting on other cards, then I say, good riddance to them. It is also important to realize that temporary AA such as CLD is something that can be overcome, with time and continued display of on-time payment habits.  If you value a card, it has CLD and is not closed by issuer, that relationship can be rebuilt with continued payments. Too many people panic when a CLD happens, rather than thinking through the options to make an informed choice about whether their card list should change. 

[Anonymous]

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@NRB525 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@NRB525 wrote:
I would suggest your situation is “mid-app” rather than typical gardening months. In the long run, this sort of micro management makes me want to close cards that are not reliable.

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Yeah and I’m probably worrying about nothing to be honest but I have set up my wallet how I want it now. 

Sync seems to take AA when people suddenly charge up too much of their cards. I’m carrying $2,963 if NFCU reports to the credit bureaus before Disco, $2,298 after Disco reports, out of $50,750 total so it seems very unlikely for me but either way, I have had my scores go from good to fair as a result of paying off that personal loan so I would like to optimize scoring as much as I can without adding another loan (doing so would drop my AAoA under 2 years). 

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Actually, my opinion is you are exactly setting yourself up for the sort of AA you fear. By keeping your card usage, your significant balances a secret from other banks, by not letting large balances report naturally and be visible historically, the risk I see is that at some point your management of reported balances slips up and a large balance or several appears. It is at that time that these skittish banks seem to become alarmed. 

I take my my lumps in short term score by letting balances report. I have been through numerous CLD, balance chasing, and card closing situations in the past when I had large balances. Those are only indicative of the bank reducing risk, and I do not blame the banks for those Adverse Actions, but now that I have worked through that with no missed payments I expect my banks to realize that they will see significant balances from time to time. 

I completely understand your concern with your current situation and rebuilding efforts. My suggestion for the long term is to let your banks see your ability to borrow from other banks and pay it off. If, in the long run Sync or Barclays cannot stomache your balances reporting on other cards, then I say, good riddance to them. It is also important to realize that temporary AA such as CLD is something that can be overcome, with time and continued display of on-time payment habits.  If you value a card, it has CLD and is not closed by issuer, that relationship can be rebuilt with continued payments. Too many people panic when a CLD happens, rather than thinking through the options to make an informed choice about whether their card list should change. 

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This is excellent advice. I quite literally have panic disorder so I panic about everything. 

I am not trying to hide balances though, that 665 from Discover was BT’d to NFCU earlier this month, like 3 days after Disco reported it I believe. 

A CLD on an 8K card wouldn’t bother me that much, especially since the PayPal will be my 2% every day card and will always be PIF because 21.99% APR vs 11.65% on my cashRewards is kind of a no-brainer. 

I have just always tried to keep balances to a single card but now that I have different cards for different purposes and almost all of them have the same due date, it’s probably time to let go of being concerned about it. I’ll have the BT paid off in a few months and $3K is pretty much the worst that would ever get reported anyway so I’m just going to stop worrying about it. At the end of the day, I always have NFCU in my wallet regardless. 

[UncleB]

@NRB525 raises an excellent point...

If I recall correctly, in the last round of CLDs with Capital One the letters that were sent out specifically called out "lack of balances with other credit card issuers" (or something to that effect) as one of the reasons for slashing the credit lines. 

Each month I let approximately $10k in balances report (a combination of 0% BTs and balances that are PIF each month) and so far nobody has had any complaints.  I've also gone 'against the grain' and allowed multiple cards to report at over 50% utilization (a few times for months on end, especially when my BCP CL was low) and again I never had any issues.

On the topic of this thread, when my Discover was brand-new I had a credit line of $5.5k, and I immediately took out a BT for $3k and didn't get in a hurry paying it down (i.e. I had high utilization), and again no problems.  There might (or might not) have been a FICO ding, but I'll always put real cash $$$ over FICO any day of the week.

Just my 2¢.

[Kforce]

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@NRB525 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@NRB525 wrote:
Congrats on the unsecured Discover card. Set it up to autopay the Statement balance, make sure you have that money in your checking when Discover says they will draw the funds, and use the card for regular purchases.

The whole pay-before-Statement-cut is overrated. Don’t fall for it month-to-month.

Enjoy your new higher CL responsibly.

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It’s not overrated if you are past 28.9%. I don’t even like my cards reporting over 8.9% which is my personal comfort level but <28.9% is a target everyone should have. 

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It would be an interesting data point for OP to check those FICO scores on the Discover statements, as time goes on. From indications, the latest statement will be right around 30%. Seeing what score looks like on the next statement would be useful to track how much benefit this really provides. 

On a long term plan however there is a school of thought that letting a credit line be more fully utilized, and paid in full, may help with CLI on accounts such as Discover. Making those balances more visible to future banks by allowing them to report and be visible on the credit report is also a form of communication to other banks which might lead to higher limits on apps with those banks.  

Utilization has no memory, but high statement balances are visible on credit reports for years.  

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For me controlling payments is about number of cards.

NO I don't want 12 more !

I put pretty good spend on all my cards.

Utilization would be high and all cards would be reporting balances.

Tank FICO but be able to get CL increases I don't need except for Fico.

Easy to just pay on a different schedule

I really don't know how bad normal use would tank my scores.

Average would be > 30% on a couple cards and alll cards with balance.

Maybe I should become a test case of Azeo vs Non-Azeo.

My guess north of 25 points. 

Anyone for "Virtual Gambling" ?   

[Anonymous]

Loss of AZEO plus util >28.9% across multiple cards? This would probably be 30-35 with your high scores. There was a huge thread with break downs for how many points in each part of the FICO score valuation but I can’t seem to find it right now. 

Then add in another 5-15 for unusual changes in your reporting suggesting new risk factors maybe? I would be curious to see this experiment play out. 

[Anonymous]

I have done AZEO test multiple times, between AZEO to all cards reporting naturally (6 cards), 0 points on EX, 7 points on TU and 2-3 points on EQ, aggregate UTI always under 9% and individual UTI never over 29%. I did get 2 points on EX when highest individual UTI fell under 9%. AZEO is overrated, I suspect reports of higher AZEO gains comes from UTI reductions, not AZEO.

[Anonymous]

This is the thread I was talking about. 

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/The-Truth-about-Credit-Card-Utilization/...

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I have done AZEO test multiple times, between AZEO to all cards reporting naturally (6 cards), 0 points on EX, 7 points on TU and 2-3 points on EQ, aggregate UTI always under 9% and individual UTI never over 29%. I did get 2 points on EX when highest individual UTI fell under 9%. AZEO is overrated, I suspect reports of higher AZEO gains comes from UTI reductions, not AZEO.

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But Kforce isn’t just talking about AZEO but higher aggregate and individual utilization. There are definite score penalties for that. 

I got dinged for passing 8.9% by TU but the 8.9% threshold doesn’t appear to apply to all profiles like everything else. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
I have done AZEO test multiple times, between AZEO to all cards reporting naturally (6 cards), 0 points on EX, 7 points on TU and 2-3 points on EQ, aggregate UTI always under 9% and individual UTI never over 29%. I did get 2 points on EX when highest individual UTI fell under 9%. AZEO is overrated, I suspect reports of higher AZEO gains comes from UTI reductions, not AZEO.

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But Kforce isn’t just talking about AZEO but higher aggregate and individual utilization. There are definite score penalties for that. 

I got dinged for passing 8.9% by TU but the 8.9% threshold doesn’t appear to apply to all profiles like everything else. 

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I know that, but it's important to differentiate the 2, very often someone with non optimized UTI goes into AZEO and gets a 20 point gain then attributes it to AZEO, when in reality most came from utilization reduction. One must first optimize UTI before testing AZEO and that AZEO gains are relatively minimal was my point.