@Anonymous wrote:One of the reasons I'm interested in this method is because I'm being dinged by FICO for having too many accounts with a balance, even though my overall utilization is only 2%-3%. So it seems like there is going to be a conflict between that ding and the minimum activity necessary to prevent the cards from being closed. I suspect I wouldn't worry about this normally, but I'm curious to see how high I can get my FICO score and I also plan to CLI and CLOC after the next AR, so want it to be high as possible.
How about getting extra points for making more than one payment, i.e. splitting the PIF amount? Is that still a valid strategy?
Where are you getting this info? Is it from the list of 4 Reasons that FICO gives you for why your score is where it is?
Here's a secret: As long as your score is something less than 850, they have to give you three or four reason codes to "splain" it to you. Even if those reason codes are not really making much of a difference.
You have low utilization. You have not missed any payments, you probably have not opened a new account in the last year (or that may be one on the list of Reason Codes), and with the low utilization your borrowing ratio is low.
That means they have to reach over in the corner to find SOMETHING to tell you, and "too many cards with balances" comes up.
I'd suggest monitoring your score, checking how many cards you let report a balance, and see whether it really makes much of a difference. I'm at the point now, with 75% to 79% of my card showing some balance (18 of 24 or 19 of 24 showing some sort of balance, 6 or 5 with no balance) and each time that swings by 1 card going from reporting to not, or not reporting to reporting, it results in a 2 point swing on TU, a 4 point swing on EQ, no change on slow-moving EX. Utilization is stable, last app nearly a year ago, only the number of cards is the real moving factor in my scores right now.
Yes, you can "optimize" by paying all cards before statement cut except one with a low balance, but "optimize" is specific to a file, and when it's already low utilization, that card count thing is probably not a large number of points.
But you have to try it yourself to see what the effect will be, then ask yourself whether the extra work involved is worth it to you. If it is, fine, go for it. I'm at 805 - 816 depending on bureau, with 18 cards reporting, and overall a single digit utilization, with two cards at over 30% utilization, though less than 40%. So that's why I get skeptical about the benefit of "all cards at zero but one". The bigger factors in anyones' score are, how long have you been making on-time payments, is overall utilization less than 10%, and are individual cards less than 50% utilization.
