Many Smaller Balances or a Few Larger Ones

[John060675]

Hello everyone, I was posed a very good question at work, which I hope someone could shed some light on. Is it better to have a balance of around 75% on every credit card that a person owns (say between 5 to 10 total), or is it better to have 95% on 2 or 3 credit cards and no balances on the other? My thought was that it is better to balance transfer from as many cards as you can to have a zero balance on as many cards as possible, even if it means being closer to totally maxing a couple credit cards. This assumes that she will not put a balance on the cards that have a zero balance after the balance transfer. What are your thoughts? Am I just missing the boat on how FICO works? Thanks, John

[Anonymous]

Having any single card over 50% hurts-

Over 85% is like a collection-

There is a fine line between saving $ and keeping FIOC happy and they often do not go hand in hand-

Ideal is less than 1/2 of open accounts with a blance and UTL under 10% on individual cards and overall-