@Anonymous wrote:
Hi everyone, long time reader first time poster. I had very horrible credit a year and a half ago, but getting a capital one secured card, a year later capital one QuickSilver one, and paying off old collections has help tremendously. Here's my situation: I have score watch through myfico.com. At the beginning of July 2014 I had a score of 583 with Equifax. My always pay off my cards every month and finally discovered the dates they are reported so I paid them in a way that they would be reported at 0 balance. My first card was reported July 10th at a 0 balance and my score came up 22 points to 605, makes sense right? Well today July 21st the other card was reported at 0 balance and I lost those 22 points. How does that happen???
Welcome to the forums!
Put simply, if all of your cards report a $0 balance, that is considered a negative in the FICO algorithm. It's likely an anachronism as more information is on the report than used to be, but under all of the current models (FICO 8 and earlier, FICO 9 only just being released now) it is a straight penalty unfortunately.
Longer term it's best to get a minimum of 3 cards and let 2 report zero in that case with a small balance on another, but short-term just let a small balance report on one of your cards and you'll get likely all of the points back.
