Score calculator

[Anonymous]

thank you everyone so much for your help on this as i been working super hard the past 6-8 months with my credit on trying to understand it and get it on the right track. wish this is something you acually taught in school but hey it happens. when my credit was ran last month it was at: XP: 542  TU: 579   EF: 556 and the mortgage people said all i need is just 15 poitns to get the green light for a VA loan. that's pretty much why i came here to get advise/action i can do to get those points i need so any and all information is great for me. so when you say pay off all the cards but 1, does it matter which i pay and which one i keep at $5? also reading different sites they said i should keep a tiny balance on a card or they won't report to the credit bureues as they won't be making any money to do so, is that something you all heard as well?

[Anonymous]

The one card that you select to report a positive balance should....

    (1) Be a true credit card (not a charge card)

    (2) Be a card in your name (not an AU card)

    (3) Have a balance of at least $5 (not less, but $5 is fine)

    (4) Have a credit limit of less than 35k

It's important to use each card at least once every four months, just to be 100% certain that they won't get closed for inactivity.  But you can still pay it off immediately and keep the balance reporting as $0.

Your credit reports will tell you the "date reported" and therefore by reading your reports you can tell if a CC issuer has stopped updating a card each month.  If that happens (the CC issuer has not updated the balance for 3+ months even though you use it) then you can certainly use the card, let it report a positive balance on the statement, and that would certainly fix that.  But that's something that probably won't ever happen.

Ignore anything that tells you that you have to keep a positive balance on a card.  That is wrong.