I heard through the grapevine...

[Anonymous]

...That if you charge up a large balance on a credit card and quickly pay it down to almost zero $$, your score will jump up many points. Is this true? I think it might be sort of true, because one month I got about 20 points because scorewatch said "you've demonstrated use of a credit card"

[chartley3]

I dont know how true that is. I usually PIF my CC each month but never see a huge jump on the FICO's.

[Anonymous]

I'm talking about racking up a larger then normal balance though--and paying it down ALMOST all the way

[Anonymous]

Well, This is what happened to me. I had a $900 balance on my CC that had a $1000 CL and just paid off $700 and my score went up. That was the only change I have had so I am assuming it was from paying it down.

[chartley3]

I will have to give that a try with my one CC.

[Anonymous]

I am thinking about putting $1500 on a $2k CL credit card and paying it off the following month...Lets hope that I get a decent score jump.

[Anonymous]

yes I will experiment as well. I have a card with no balance right now and I plan on racking up a few hundred dollars this month on it, then paying it off to very low just before the closing date. I did this 2 months ago and the score went up substancially.

[Takunda1]

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rifleman wrote:
...That if you charge up a large balance on a credit card and quickly pay it down to almost zero $$, your score will jump up many points. Is this true? I think it might be sort of true, because one month I got about 20 points because scorewatch said "you've demonstrated use of a credit card"

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I believe that may be true...BUT.....How many points are you going to lose for hight utility?? I guess once yo uguys try let us know. WHat I've seen with Fico is you tend to lose more points than you gain for the same thing.

[Anonymous]

The point is you rack of a balance and pay if off BEFORE your statement is generated--say you rack up $700 and pay off 690 of it BEFORE your monthly statement is created. Note once your statement is created, it will then report a $10 balance to the credit agencies

[Anonymous]

It all depends when your CCC reports to the CRA.  If they report while you have that small balance, then your util will be low which is beneficial for your score.  But some CCCs report after your statement date so if you have PIFd and have a zero balance you won't have optimum util.  Your score is always going to be calculated by your util at one point in time only so it doesn't matter what you do every month (provided you pay on time, of course).