Revolving balance with no utilization percentage

[CreditBob]

From personal experience you can still get the most optimum FICO score by leaving a $ 6 balance on one credit card which shows a zero percent utilization because of the amount owed is extremely low. I only have two and on the other card it is at a zero balance. The other factor that has gone away in the credit risk model, Balances on multiple revolving accounts, meaning two or more credit cards with balances. The other factor that has gone away is no new account has been opened within the last two years. And lastly my score went up three points after the last inquiry has fallen off.

[Anonymous]

---

@CreditBob wrote:
From personal experience you can still get the most optimum FICO score by leaving a $ 6 balance on one credit card which shows a zero percent utilization because of the amount owed is extremely low. I only have two and on the other card it is at a zero balance.

---

I am pretty sure you are referring to the front end summary page of whatever credit monitoring service (CMS) that you have.  It is true that some of these summary pages will round percents to the nearest integer, and thus a utilization of 0.4% (for example) will be rendered as 0%.  But the summary page on another CMS might display that as "< 1%" rather than 0%, and still others will round all percents up.

This last approach is what the actual FICO algorithm on the back end actually does.  It rounds all percents up.  Thus if a person has a utilization of 9.002%, FICO views that as 10%.

Knowing how a FICO alogorithm actually works is important, because the CMS summary page will often display your report info in a way counter to how the credit score the CMS also provides was generated.

[Anonymous]

Any non-zero reported balance (even $1) by definition is not 0% utilization, so it's not scored as 0% utilization by the FICO algorithm.

[Thomas_Thumb]

---

@CreditBob wrote:
From personal experience you can still get the most optimum FICO score by leaving a $ 6 balance on one credit card which shows a zero percent utilization because of the amount owed is extremely low. I only have two and on the other card it is at a zero balance. The other factor that has gone away in the credit risk model, Balances on multiple revolving accounts, meaning two or more credit cards with balances. The other factor that has gone away is no new account has been opened within the last two years. And lastly my score went up three points after the last inquiry has fallen off.

---

The highlighted statement is rather interesting. I wonder where that comes from. 

I vascillate back and forth on whether the "new accounts" score card(s) have an upper age threshold of 2 years or one year. Currently I am on the two year band wagon although there is a scoring threshold associated with 12 months for AoYA.

[Revelate]

---

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

---

@CreditBob wrote:
From personal experience you can still get the most optimum FICO score by leaving a $ 6 balance on one credit card which shows a zero percent utilization because of the amount owed is extremely low. I only have two and on the other card it is at a zero balance. The other factor that has gone away in the credit risk model, Balances on multiple revolving accounts, meaning two or more credit cards with balances. The other factor that has gone away is no new account has been opened within the last two years. And lastly my score went up three points after the last inquiry has fallen off.

---

The highlighted statement is rather interesting. I wonder where that comes from. 

I vascillate back and forth on whether the "new accounts" score card(s) have an upper age threshold of 2 years or one year. Currently I am on the two year band wagon although there is a scoring threshold associated with 12 months for AoYA.

---

Based on my reports that seems to vary on FICO model (FICO 8/9 1 year, FICO 04 more than 1 year) , but all bets are off if we're not talking reason codes and I suspect that this is from some random CMS as CGID suggested.