Looking for volunteers who have many credit cards

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymouswrote:

Interesting. Will say I just paid to zero all accounts but installment and mortgage. Score took a dive of 16 points. Then this month I allowed $5 to report on only one account and the score went back up 16 points. Until my test I was under the impression I needed to have 1.5% utilization. In the past I have tested at 10%, 5%, 2%, and now my latest. Quite surprised to see that the $5 reporting for my YMMV profile gave me the same scores as when I had other percentages. Not quite what your doing but close using FICO 08 and the number of cards you reference. My test was just a curiosity and yes "curiosity killed the cat"

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How many cards do you have, Dinosaur?  If I were to set up this experiment in the Understanding FICO Scoring forum, would you be willing to go from exactly one card to all cards reporting?

And just to confirm, you have exactly two open installment accounts... is that right?  One mortgage and one other loan?

[Anonymous]

For my purposes specific information is not placed on line. Identity thieves are said to run programs and connect various postings with data. Just got hit two weeks ago on a card so I need to remain more general.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymouswrote:
For my purposes specific information is not placed on line. Identity thieves are said to run programs and connect various postings with data. Just got hit two weeks ago on a card so I need to remain more general.

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In that case, I can see why you would avoid doing what many people here do, which is to list every card they have (including issuer and make/model) along with its credit limit.  That said, simply indicating that you have 10-20 cards (say) tells an identity thief almost nothing.  Such a bad guy would still lack:

The card issuers

Their credit limits

Your first and last name (I assume Dinosaur is made up)

Your Address, State, City, and Zip

Your Social

Your Date of birth

Knowing that a person in this country has between 10-20 cards tells him very little about who that person could be.

Still, it's naturally ok if you don't want to participate in the test!  Best wishes...

[Credit_hawk]

I fit all your requirements and have done this experiment myself. If I pay off all cards except 1 it gives me a 4-5 pt FICO 8 boost compared to letting them all report a balance of some sort.

[Anonymous]

Great to know.  I will let you know when I am ready to run the test thread and I hope you'll be able to re-run your test and post your results.  Going from 1 to All to 1 is very helpful.

And it sounds like you have exactly installment account and many cards?  (i.e. at least 8 with more being better).

[Anonymous]

CGID, question regarding the score pulling of your proposed test.  If using multiple CCT $1 trials, the greatest frequency with which one can do a pull is every 7 days.  So, say the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th.  Maximum therefore would be 5 pulls per month, but that's probably a bit unrealistic as the reporting dates of your cards would have to be perfect to make that happen.  Even if spacing out the dates of your cards as perfect as possible, reporting dates can fluctuate +/- a day or two, so I would say it's reasonable/realistic to say that 4 data points/pulls per month is about the best we can expect here.  That being said, it would take (in months) someone their number of cards divided by 4 to complete the test in 1 direction and then the same amount of time to reverse it.  With 12 cards, for example, this would take 3 months one way and 3 months the other way, or 6 months total.  My concern here is that over a period of this many months, other factors can be changing within a profile that may result in un-clean data points.  Certainly more stable profiles here (no inquiries, known threshold crossings for age of accounts, etc) are going to yield better results.

Anyway, this just came to mind tonight when I was looking at my CC statement ending dates and trying to figure out the best way to move them around prior to undergoing the test.  Just wondering if you had any advice or feedback on this topic for those like myself considering taking it on.

[Anonymous]

Hi BBS.  I may be missing something obvious, but I think it takes a person at most 30 days to get his cards reporting AZEO.  After that, pull your scores at CCT.  Then charge something to all cards and in 30 more days they will all be reporting a positive balance.  Then pull your scores again.

And if we have a trooper, he'll pull them all back to AZEO and give us the score again.  Going from 1 to All to 1.  Three timepoints.  Three bucks.

[Anonymous]

I see what you're saying CGID.  When I read your original post regarding number of accounts with balances it sounded to me like you were looking for someone to have 1 card with a reported balance, then 2, then 3 all the way to all cards, while tracking scores via CCT pulls every step of the way.  My impression was that you were looking for data points with respect to number of cards with balances reported.  I completely misunderstood what you were aiming to do.  Going from AZEO to all cards wtih balances back to AZEO is quite different and certainly much easier (and faster) to accomplish.

[Anonymous]

Nope.  I just want to confirm that (a) FICO 8 cares at all about this factor and (b) what is the greatest penalty a person could get from it.