Hi all,
As I am preparing for the mortgage process, I was given advice by one of the people over at the broker that I should allow all cards to report a small balance, such as $10. This seems contradictory to what I have learned over the past year here on myFIco. I have been using the 'Pay all Cards and allow ONE to report a 9% balance" method for most months. Is this accurate? Thoughts?
No way. Bad advice. Let one or two cards report a balance.
Current Score: TU: 674 | EQ: 722 | EX: 717 | Last Inq. 2/16/15...Locked Up in The Garden
@StartingOver10 wrote:Wow...scary. I would run away from that broker if they are giving that type of advice.
No, do not let all of the cards report a small balance. Your score will get dinged because all the cards are reporting a balance!
Did they say why they want you to do that?
That made no sense. I am done with this broker. Thank you so much for confirming my suspicions. No idea why they would ask that.
@kjel wrote:No way. Bad advice. Let one or two cards report a balance.
Thank you. I am not liking the idea at all..
Welll actually my mortgage banker gave me the same advice. I foloowed everything else they said but this one as for me it would be to easy to forget that 5 dollar charge on a card i don't normally use.
BUT i did ask why because i also found the request odd. The answer was that they want to see a responsible use of credit not just the availability of it. So I took a slightly different approacch and rather then letting them all report a balance I just rotated them so that each card was used for a month. once i did that on all cards i went back to normal. (of course I don't have that many)
I love my mortgage banker so would not leave just because of this request.
Terrible advice, but you should not do the exact opposite either. I wrote on my blog on what I would do to maximize my score in the short term. Feel free to check it out: http://hiepsfinance.com/2014/11/04/how-do-i-improve-my-fico-credit-score-in-a-month/
