@jamie123 wrote:
I'm going to keep my scores groomed from here on out unless I screw up. I will have 1 card report a small balance and all the rest $0. I will actually try and keep the reporting card very close to the $387 it is at now. Perhaps just a few dollars difference so I can see it change on the report.
Most excellent! Yeah I just paid down my reporting Sallie from 86 to 84 for this month heh. Mortgage LO suggested I didn't use my credit cards, um, no, I can manage my report all on my own thanks! 
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Okay...Here's the big reveal when it comes to "All cards reporting $0 versus 1 card reporting a small balance."
My credit report stats:
My EQ and TU reports are identical and contain:
7 open CCs, 1 closed CC, 2 installment loans and 1 tax lien.
AAoA is 1 year 9 months.
My EX report contains:
7 open CCs, 2 closed CCs and 2 installment loans.
My EX doesn't have the tax lien and does have a closed CC from 1990.
These scores were pulled 12 days apart with the only difference being the CC reporting. The scores from 6/9 reflect ALL CCs reporting $0 versus the scores from 6/21 showed 1 CC reporting a balance of $387/$6000 CL card. My overall UTI on 6/21 is 1%.
After seeing these scores, I hope everyone has a small balance reporting on 1 card before apping for any kind of new credit!
Here are the scores:
@jamie123 wrote:Okay...Here's the big reveal when it comes to "All cards reporting $0 versus 1 card reporting a small balance."
My credit report stats:
My EQ and TU reports are identical and contain:
7 open CCs, 1 closed CC, 2 installment loans and 1 tax lien.
AAoA is 1 year 9 months.
My EX report contains:
7 open CCs, 2 closed CCs and 2 installment loans.
My EX doesn't have the tax lien and does have a closed CC from 1990.
These scores were pulled 12 days apart with the only difference being the CC reporting. The scores from 6/9 reflect ALL CCs reporting $0 versus the scores from 6/21 showed 1 CC reporting a balance of $387/$6000 CL card. My overall UTI on 6/21 is 1%.
After seeing these scores, I hope everyone has a small balance reporting on 1 card before apping for any kind of new credit!
Here are the scores:
That is trulyl amazing.
I'm convinced.
@Jamie: many thanks dude!
The only score that strikes me as wierd as hell was the non-change for Equifax Beacon 5.0: that was the version that Scorewatch used here for years and to my knowledge the 0 cards reporting a balance = negative was absolutely accepted during that time but that was the most granular of monitoring solutions at the time.
@jamie123 wrote:
@Revelate wrote:@Anonymous: many thanks dude!
The only score that strikes me as wierd as hell was the non-change for Equifax Beacon 5.0: that was the version that Scorewatch used here for years and to my knowledge the 0 cards reporting a balance = negative was absolutely accepted during that time but that was the most granular of monitoring solutions at the time.
I know! I double and triple checked that EQ Mortgage score! It really is 685.
It didn't move 1 point! I think EQ really hates me having an unpaid tax lien on the report. The tax lien was filed Jan. 2008 and is now 7 1/2 years old. You think they would cut me some slack. The rest of my EQ report is spotless.
I am working on having the tax liens removed from EQ and TU but that might not happen until sometime in August.
We can test that too! How much you can gain by having a tax lien removed from a youngish (2 yrs AAoA at that point) but otherwise perfectly clean report. We saw the gain when it fell off EX but I have that 1 twenty-five year old CC on that report so it skews things a bit. (I bet you would like to see that!)
Well I'm convinced EQ hates me even with a paid tax lien so who knows haha: 760-770 just won't be a problem I'm betting FICO 8. I'm expecting to beat down my AAOA a little bit with a few more cards, I'm within sniffing dinstance of 3 years now but when I get clean finally (late 2017) will be at least 4 years and maybe 5 but the data will absolutely be interesting anyway... I always like your updates .
Thanks again for this one!
@jamie123 wrote:Well...
I screwed up...
I let a second card report a balance of 29/6000.
But guess what?
For the first time in my credit history my scores didn't change! So I have 2 of 7 cards reporting small balances and my EQ score has held steady at 705 for what it's worth.
Did you have an offsetting change in installment utilization or similar? Wierdsauce otherwise TBH . Certainly all my data has been explicit every time I've gone up and down the scale.