Discover FICO Scores

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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First I spent a few cycles stabilizing my score by reporting every account (7 accounts total) and overall at about 1%, the next cycle I reported 0% while still leaving some balance on every account, no changes to my EX (778 w/5 inquiries) and TU (789). 

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If you had a balance on even just 1 account, your aggregate utilization cannot be 0%.  FICO always rounds up, so even .0001% utilization is seen as 1%.

[Anonymous]

I'm only going by what it says on my Experian report that uses FICO 8 and updates daily, the 3 accounts with balance are 50/11000, 21/8000 and 17/9000, all 3 accounts shows 0% usage as well as 0% overall usage in the report summary page.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I'm only going by what it says on my Experian report that uses FICO 8 and updates daily, the 3 accounts with balance are 50/11000, 21/8000 and 17/9000, all 3 accounts shows 0% usage as well as 0% overall usage in the report summary page.

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I understand that.  Just know that summary pages from any source be it Experian, Credit Karma etc. use just fluff software that will round your utilization percentage down to 0%, but FICO scoring still will see ANY positive reported balance as 1%. 

I let $1.00 report on my cards all the time and all of them are 5-figure limits ranging from $10k to $40k.  This means my utilization on any one of those cards is .0001% to .000025%.    My actual aggregate utilization is often around .000007% ($1 on $145k in limits, give or take).  ALL monitoring software that I've ever seen displays my utilization, both on the individual cards and aggregate as 0% when I know very well FICO sees it as 1%.  If I don't let that $1.00 report, my scores drop 16-22 points depending on bureau because I'm actually at 0% utilization then and am scored accordingly under the FICO algorithm.

[Anonymous]

Understood, that would explain why it made no difference when I managed it from 1% to "0"%.

[jamie123]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Understood, that would explain why it made no difference when I managed it from 1% to "0"%.

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Yeah, me too.

I have proven it a couple of times. I lose 18 points if all cards report $0 versus one card reporting $3. Yes, I can gain or lose 18 points over a $3 reporting balance.

[Anonymous]

Yup, all it takes is $1.  Not even $3.  Any reported balance constitutes utilization and will land you in the money zone of 1%-8.99% utilization for maximum FICO scoring benefit.

[kxkxkxx]

What's weird to me is how my Disco score never moves...stays the exact same each month, meanwhile my FICO scores here are about 30 points higher.

[Anonymous]

Your Discover score is a TU FICO 08 score.  If you compare that score to your same TU FICO 08 score from another source, assuming it is pulled at the same time the scores will be the same.

[Anonymous]

Update, all reports are in, one account reporting $17 and the rest $0, disappointingly my EX FICO remains at 778.  Based on my data point thus far, leaving a balance on every account with an overall 1% UTI vs AZEO (All Zero Except One), as well as somewhere in between, made no difference in my score.  I will report back when my Discover Scorecard updates on the 21st and see what happened on the TU side.