The AZEO method (all zero except one) will yield you with the most favorable results score wise if you're in a place where you really need your scores to be pretty, otherwise just let your natural spend report organically for the most part and pay each card in full each month. Keep aggregate utilization under 8.9%, and individual under 28.9% for optimal scoring brackets. Make sure the card you let report a balance is a major bank card, not a store card or a card from a credit union. I believe the score penalty for letting all cards report at 0 is something to the tune of about 15 points. Otherwise, as long as you're not letting large portions of your cards report each month, just spend and pay like you normally would and you'll be fine.
@Eighthundredbound wrote:I pay off all balances on my credit cards (8 + a charge card) before the closing dates on my cards. My CU is often 0 on several.
I know that keeping your CU under 30% is ideal and logically I'd think that the lower it is the better right down to zero. However, I read that having a little balance (>0) is better for your FICO score than 0. Is this true and if so how much of a difference in my score does it make? How much above zero is ideal?
Thanks to any responder(s) in advance.
Optimum scoring, especially for older model scoring models, is:
-all but one of the accounts reporting a zero balance, and
-one account (a non-Chase bank card) reporting a small (8.9% or lower) balance which gets paid off after reporting.
