Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.
@CreditBob wrote:Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.
A $13 balance is sufficient to avoid the all zero penalty, so long as it's on a bank card. It doesn't matter if the website you're looking at rounds it down to 0% in the consumer-facing interface.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@CreditBob wrote:Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.
A $13 balance is sufficient to avoid the all zero penalty, so long as it's on a bank card. It doesn't matter if the website you're looking at rounds it down to 0% in the consumer-facing interface.
Thanks. I've wondered that myself. Does one need at least 0.5% so it rounds up to 1% instead of down to 0%? Or is any amount ok? I wasn't sure if they were looking at all zero percentages or all zero dollars. I never got around to asking, so thanks to both of you.
@mgood wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@CreditBob wrote:Last month 2 out of the three credit cards had a zero balance. The third one had a $ 13 balance of when it reported with 0% utilization due to extremely low balance. If I increase the balance a little more to reflect a 1% utilization if let's say $ 100, will my score go up? Or should I keep it at $ 13? I know if everything gets paid off it dings you for no recent revolving activity.
A $13 balance is sufficient to avoid the all zero penalty, so long as it's on a bank card. It doesn't matter if the website you're looking at rounds it down to 0% in the consumer-facing interface.
Thanks. I've wondered that myself. Does one need at least 0.5% so it rounds up to 1% instead of down to 0%? Or is any amount ok? I wasn't sure if they were looking at all zero percentages or all zero dollars. I never got around to asking, so thanks to both of you.
The rounding doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the scoring algorithm.
I didn't say any amount is ok. It should be a balance of $10 or greater. Balances of less than that on occasion get reported to the bureaus as zero. I have seen reports in this forum that Discover actually drops very small balances.