Minimum usage to avoid limit decrease

[Catbird_Seat]

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@NoMoreE46 wrote:

@Catbird_Seat

Excellent commitment there with your cards.

Would you be able to list which creditors prefer to have a balance report vs ones you think don't?

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Thanks, it's not as much work as it might seem to keep track. 

From what I've gathered, the creditors who want to see a balance report are Discover, Synch, Target (TD) & Kohl's, which is a Cap 1 owned card but doesn't act like one with regard to stmt balances reporting or not. 

There are probably others, but those are the 4 that I stick with letting the balance report to show usage. (Usually about 2-5% of CL.)

[Guyatthebeach]

Dennis885,

Welcome to the myfico forum!

As someone with an entire deck of credit cards, I have 8 cards that are daily drivers for personal and professional use. The others get used one a quarter and I track their use in my planner.  I have done this ever since my bankruptcy and never had an issue yet.

Guyatthebeach

[Kforce]

You have received a lot of good responses so far.

"Late to the game" as they say.

Not a credit card collector, however because of just time have had  20+ cards.  I pay all my cards every month to zero before the statement and have most cards with  $5-$10 dollars spend on them once every 3-6 months.  No issuer has ever reduced a CL from paying to zero before statement, or for me not using the card enough.  This is with ~50 years of having cards.

I am sure some have, however I also would bet that other factors were floating around at the same time. Lot's of new credit seeking, falling scores, ultra high utilization, a late, etc.  One with good scores, stable income, and a profile with out a bunch of new negative's is very unlikely to receive a CL decrease.

As @M_Smart007  said CU cards often are the safest, they have you as a member and a little of your money.  Have a card from First City CU, never used it for 20+ years and they did not close it or reduce it's limit.  Not until finding this forum did i learn you should not do that.  Now I use it once every 4 months for $5 and it is ~30 years old.  Do not believe on putting spend on a card that has lower or no rewards to make an issuer happy.  Cards should be used how they best fit your needs, not to make issuers happy.

Have had cards with all the issuers you listed and none ever blinked with zero every month or the just keep alive spend.

Times change and as they say "YMMV", but from personal experience I would not worry about it

More important things to ponder.

[Kforce]

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@NoMoreE46 wrote:

With Amex (and BofA),  DW has more than 7 years of inactivity without any AA.

Of course this is also profile dependent.  Her scores are > 800 with < 10 % utilization.

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My daughter also almost never uses her Discover

Never been an issue.

Would not care if they did !

* Also > 800 and < 10% Util *

[donprimero]

In response to the last sentence of your comment: "no balance reporting doesn't count in their internal algorithms for usage."

Wow-- that seems backwards. I've only been building credit for a little over a year, but to confirm if I spend $5,000 on an Amex and pay it down to 0 before my statement closes and reports to the bureaus, Amex won't count that $5,000 spend as activity? I figured since the banks and bureaus are separate, there's independent record-keeping at play.

Anywhere I can read up on this?

[Slabenstein]

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@donprimero wrote:

In response to the last sentence of your comment: "no balance reporting doesn't count in their internal algorithms for usage."

Wow-- that seems backwards. I've only been building credit for a little over a year, but to confirm if I spend $5,000 on an Amex and pay it down to 0 before my statement closes and reports to the bureaus, Amex won't count that $5,000 spend as activity? I figured since the banks and bureaus are separate, there's independent record-keeping at play.

Anywhere I can read up on this?

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That will count as activity for Amex.  See @Catbird_Seat 's post above for the list of lenders that they have found prefer a reported balance.  Note that my experience with Discover has been different from theirs.

[Anonymous]

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@Slabenstein wrote:

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@donprimero wrote:

In response to the last sentence of your comment: "no balance reporting doesn't count in their internal algorithms for usage."

Wow-- that seems backwards. I've only been building credit for a little over a year, but to confirm if I spend $5,000 on an Amex and pay it down to 0 before my statement closes and reports to the bureaus, Amex won't count that $5,000 spend as activity? I figured since the banks and bureaus are separate, there's independent record-keeping at play.

Anywhere I can read up on this?

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That will count as activity for Amex.  See @Catbird_Seat 's post above for the list of lenders that they have found prefer a reported balance.  Note that my experience with Discover has been different from theirs.

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We really would need to know the basis for @Catbird_Seat experience.   It is after all obvious that EVERY lender knows what has been charged on their cards.    It's possible that for some purposes they choose to discount this and go only by reported statement balance, but again, would like to know the context as to how this information was obtained.

TL/DR: don't believe it!

[Slabenstein]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Slabenstein wrote:

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@donprimero wrote:

In response to the last sentence of your comment: "no balance reporting doesn't count in their internal algorithms for usage."

Wow-- that seems backwards. I've only been building credit for a little over a year, but to confirm if I spend $5,000 on an Amex and pay it down to 0 before my statement closes and reports to the bureaus, Amex won't count that $5,000 spend as activity? I figured since the banks and bureaus are separate, there's independent record-keeping at play.

Anywhere I can read up on this?

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That will count as activity for Amex.  See @Catbird_Seat 's post above for the list of lenders that they have found prefer a reported balance.  Note that my experience with Discover has been different from theirs.

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We really would need to know the basis for @Catbird_Seat experience.   It is after all obvious that EVERY lender knows what has been charged on their cards.    It's possible that for some purposes they choose to discount this and go only by reported statement balance, but again, would like to know the context as to how this information was obtained.

TL/DR: don't believe it!

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It would surprise me if a lender didn't count charges paid off before the statement cut as activity, yeah, but Discover is the only one of lenders they listed that I have, so that's the only one for which I can say I've never had them pretend I wasn't using their card b/c I was paying them early.

[Catbird_Seat]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Slabenstein wrote:

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@donprimero wrote:

In response to the last sentence of your comment: "no balance reporting doesn't count in their internal algorithms for usage."

Wow-- that seems backwards. I've only been building credit for a little over a year, but to confirm if I spend $5,000 on an Amex and pay it down to 0 before my statement closes and reports to the bureaus, Amex won't count that $5,000 spend as activity? I figured since the banks and bureaus are separate, there's independent record-keeping at play.

Anywhere I can read up on this?

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That will count as activity for Amex.  See @Catbird_Seat 's post above for the list of lenders that they have found prefer a reported balance.  Note that my experience with Discover has been different from theirs.

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We really would need to know the basis for @Catbird_Seat experience.   It is after all obvious that EVERY lender knows what has been charged on their cards.    It's possible that for some purposes they choose to discount this and go only by reported statement balance, but again, would like to know the context as to how this information was obtained.

TL/DR: don't believe it!

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That's unfounded & an odd thing to post. 

Believe it or not, I read about the creditors on MF, you can do a search yourself to find posters who have commented, I didn't just pull it out of thin air. 

If you don't want to believe me or the others who have posted, that's your prerogative & you should already know that a fair amount of the posts on MF are YMMV, what you believe doesn't mean it's not true or hasn't happened to someone else. 

If you spend enough time reading through posts & gathering information, you will see all kinds of things that apply to various creditors. 

Here's a very recent post about Target (TD), scroll down to post #3.

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Target-no-CLI-so-should-I-cancel/m-p/6684193

Before going that route, have you already done all of the things that seem to trigger them?

• Use it monthly.
• Let at least some balance report for the current statement every month (that doesn't mean carry a balance and pay interest - just don't pay to $0 before statement closing every month; anecdotal evidence seems to point to paying the card to $0 is treated the same as non-use with TD Bank).
• Pay in full each month before the due date.

[Anonymous]

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@Catbird_Seat wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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TL/DR: don't believe it!

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That's unfounded & an odd thing to post. 

Believe it or not, I read about the creditors on MF, you can do a search yourself to find posters who have commented, I didn't just pull it out of thin air. 

If you don't want to believe me or the others who have posted, that's your prerogative & you should already know that a fair amount of the posts on MF are YMMV, what you believe doesn't mean it's not true or hasn't happened to someone else. 

If you spend enough time reading through posts & gathering information, you will see all kinds of things that apply to various creditors. 

Here's a very recent post about Target (TD), scroll down to post #3.

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Target-no-CLI-so-should-I-cancel/m-p/6684193

Before going that route, have you already done all of the things that seem to trigger them?

• Use it monthly.
• Let at least some balance report for the current statement every month (that doesn't mean carry a balance and pay interest - just don't pay to $0 before statement closing every month; anecdotal evidence seems to point to paying the card to $0 is treated the same as non-use with TD Bank).
• Pay in full each month before the due date.

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Sorry, that came off as over-harsh, I didn't mean I didn't believe you personally, I merely think that some of the anecodal evidence is just that, reports where no-one is really sure that the analysis is correct, and thus shouldn't be taken as the final truth.   Even if it's from @K-in-Boston!  OK, maybe then.