0 balance and one card at 9% question

[Anonymous]

What I see for optimal scoring utilization wise is that it takes all cards to report a zero balance and one card at 9% or under, does that mean 9% of just that one card or 9% of your overall combined limits of all cards?

Say my overall credit limits of my cards combined are 10,000. If all of my cards are at zero except one which has a 1000 limit should I put no more than 90.00 on that one or can I put 900.00 on it and still be in the optimal scoring range?

[Anonymous]

First off always aim to make your balances LESS than the indicated breakpoint but not at it.  In theory exactly 9.00% is fine, but in practice it is easy to be a few pennies over that, which will cause your actual percent to be 9.00035% (say) and FICO will round that up to 10%.  You therefore want to make make sure you are at LESS than 9%.

In answer to your question, the 9% figure refers to total utilization.  The three things to shoot for are:

All cards at Zero Except One (AZEO)

The remaining card that reports a positive balance should have an individual utilization of < 29%

Your total utilization should be < 9%.

But an easy practical way to do that is AZEO and one card with a small balance, like $20 or so. 

[Anonymous]

Gotcha.

I wasn't thinking to put a balance up to exactly 9% but was just wondering for my knowledge of all this. I put very small balances on my cards. I have 10,000 available but my balance right now is 40.00 on one card.