@cr101 wrote:I'm technically using 0.04% of my overall CL. But, the bureaus have me at 0% util due to rounding.
I have 3 cards reporting small balances, though. The bal on each card is so low that the card is also reporting 0% util.
I've heard that your'e dinged when you have no card reporting. Is that ding for $0 in balances or 0% util?
If all cards report zero you get the "all zero penalty". Best to let one bankcard report a $10 or $20 balance before you pay it off.
This is a tricky one, but based on all my research and experience, the answer is...no...you're not being hit with the all zero penalty here. It's the Accounts With Balances (AWB) metric that causes the all zero penalty...not utilization. As long as you have at least one revolving account with a non-zero balance...preferably a major bankcard (VISA, Mastercard, Discover, AMEX if not a charge card) with a CL under $31K...you are very likely not being hit with the all zero penalty. The confusion seems to occur bc sometimes if your balance is 'too low', a particular lender may 'forgive' your balance, and report it to $0 even if you didn't want them to causing the all zero penalty. Also, bc credit monitoring services will round down tiny utilization to 0% as in your case, but the FICO algorithm doesn't care. If you're trying to get your max score at any one moment, best practice is to implement AZEO with a recommended $10 balance reporting on 1 card. Remember, utilization has no month to month memory in current FICO models, so it's only really important when you 'need' your best scores for applying for new credit. It can be implemented pretty much anytime in 4-5 weeks.
Go for $20. $0 balance is 0%. That is as mentioned above nothing was reported at all on all your revolvers in a given cycle. Even if its round out to 0.
@cr101 wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@cr101 wrote:I'm technically using 0.04% of my overall CL. But, the bureaus have me at 0% util due to rounding.
I have 3 cards reporting small balances, though. The bal on each card is so low that the card is also reporting 0% util.
I've heard that your'e dinged when you have no card reporting. Is that ding for $0 in balances or 0% util?
If all cards report zero you get the "all zero penalty". Best to let one bankcard report a $10 or $20 balance before you pay it off.
Yes, this was a complete accident on my part due to poor timing of payments and miscalculating Cap1's silly new statement cut date. One of the bal was as low as $2, another was $5. I was so annoyed at the thought of increasing my '# of cards reporting' # by 2 bc of a $2 and $5 bal. LOL. Luckily, the cards will re-report soon and I have a planned, larger bal that will report soon and fix any all zero penalty.
@SoonerSoldier33 This likely won't happen again. But, I was curiuos about the differences between $0 bal and 0% util. So, thanks for providing this info.
The software often rounds down to zero percent utilization if your utilization is less than half a percent. But that's for user interface purposes, not for scoring purposes. For scoring purposes, a $10 balance, even it's rounded down to 0% utilization, will still report and suffice to avoid the 'all zero' penalty. But I'm a nervous person, so I would make it $20. There are reports of balances of $5 or less being actually reported as zero.