Personal Finance and Mortgage Score

[MarcPA]

High balance for the charge card was 24k. I have ran a lot of business expenses through it in the past.

[Anonymous]

And your charge card's reported balance stays roughly around $800?  (Recently and in the upcoming future I mean -- obviously in the past it was occasionally far higher.)

[Anonymous]

I think EX might be including that 24k as part of your total credit limit for the total util calculation.  The EX mortgage scoreis based on a FICO model from 20 years ago (FICO 98).

TU and EQ use a model from six years later (FICO 04) and might not use HB as a proxy for credit limit.

Revelate and Thomas Thumb would know the answer.

But the practical advice I gave you shouldn't be affected.  You still will be helped by the painless creation of several $0 balances in place  of positive balances, and you'll still be helped a lot by removing most of the Individual U penalty from the Citi card.

[MarcPA]

You all are awesome. In the past I got a mortgage by the skin of my teeth. With the exception of the Citi card I just used them for either getting a signup bonus and upping my credit limit or I use strategically for different perks and cash back.

I don't pay interest on the cards with small balances I just need to make sure to pay them in full before the statement cuts.

[Anonymous]

Right.  FICO only looks at what balances are being reported to the three bureaus.  Most CC companies report whatever your balance was the hour before the statement prints.

So if you want almost all your cards to report $0, you just need to pay them to $0 a couple days before the statement and make sure there are no pending transactions that might register at the last minute.