@Anonymous wrote:You have it right... except that what you said does not apply to the oldest models, e.g. the mortgage models. There Amex charge cards do count toward utilization, with the High Balance being used as a stand-in for Credit Limit.
To be specific it's only FICO 98 when it comes to any used score today that has this issue.
FICO 04, which both EQ FICO 5 and TU FICO 4 are on the standard tri-merge mortgage pull discount Amex charge cards and any other tradeline with a Term of 1 month from revolving utilization calculations same as the current FICO 8/9 models.
Ultimately if you're getting prepped for a mortgage and implementing AZEO, leave the balance on a national bank card... my old beloved Sallie Mae was my balance card during my mortgage fiesta for example.
@Anonymous wrote:FICO 8 and 9 ignore the card in their utilization calculations.
Much older models (e.g. the EX mortgage score) do count it towards utilization. There's a field called High Balance on your report, which is the highest balance your card has ever had. The very old models would make treat this as your credit limit for the practical utilization calculation. Thus, for example, if you had an Amex green card, and the highest your balance had ever been was $8239, then the card would be treated as if it had a credit limit of $8239 for the various util calculations.
So way back in the day (if one had a charge card at all, and there still is no reason to do that necessarily) the best strategy for the owner of a charge card would be to create a huge balance on the card early on (if he could do that without unnecessary spending).
I just got my first personal charge card. Then I put in a search and found your excellent post, CGID, which sums up nicely what I do and don't need to concern myself with.
Question: would the high balance be an intra month number, so that if I wanted to optimize the first month all I would need to do is make sure to pay it down, or pay it off, by the time the statement is cut?
