Credit Cards & Balances

[SprintToFinish]

Question regarding credit cards and balances. I have probably 10 credit accounts(amazon, chase, paypal, cap1, amex, barclay, etc..) whats the golden rule to maximize your credit score profile? Do you want all small balances on each card? or do you want all cards at 0 balance? or all but 1 card with 0 balance and the 1 card report a very small balance? Thanks for the information!

[SOGGIE]

The AZEO Method yields a more positive effect...All Zeroes Except on One [account].

[Anonymous]

Is your goal (1) to gradually build your score over time?  Or do you have (2) an important need for credit (e.g. a car loan, a home loan, etc.) coming up for which you'd need to get every available extra point?

(2) is short term.  (1) is the long game.  Different strategies are appropriate for each.

[Anonymous]

My answer for the OP here is that it really doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things.  It's tough to tell if your profile is clean or dirty based on your scores.  On my dirty file, going from AZEO to all cards with small balances reporting resulted in 0 points of loss on my FICO 8 scores.  On a clean file, going from AZEO to all cards with small balances reporting may be a 10 point loss or so depending on profile.  To me, that's not significant.  But, that's FICO 8 scores. 

Mortgage scores are more sensitive to number of cards wtih balances reported, so those scores would drop more.  As CGID touched on, your strategy would be different if you were planning on applying for a mortgage in the relative near future.  If that were the case, implementing AZEO would be the best course of action.  If not, there's no harm at all in having small balances reported on all of your cards and it's simply recommended that you pay them in full every cycle.