@Anonymous wrote:
My impression is, credit card utilization calculations are based on your balances as of the closing date(s), and FICO doesn't know or care if you pay it in full during the grace period or not. Next, they'll ding you for not using your credit cards at all (zero balance on closing date), and they'll ding you for having balances on more than one card. Plus, you don't get any available credit dollars assigned to any of your signature cards (cards without a fixed reporting limit).
The strategy that has maximized our scores is:
• pay all credit cards except one (using on-line banking transfers) BEFORE their closing dates down to a zero balance.
• for that final card, pay it BEFORE its closing date down to anywhere from $1 to $100.
I do this 4 times per year (for example, in June, because the June statements are used to send me my member's quarterly July FICO score). I would also do it for any month where I knew my credit was going to be pulled by a lender or insurance company the next month.
I don't believe this is a good strategy for those who have a card with a small credit limit to have a balance as high as $100. For example if the CL is $250 which is typical for rebuilder cards and you show a balance of $100 each month your uitilzation will be 40% which is much too high.
In my opinion optimal credit utilization for FICO scoring purposes seems to be:
Total revolving and individual utilization > 0 and < 9%, the lower the better, and
Reporting a balance on less than half of your revolving TL's, and
Reporting a balance on half or less of all TL's.
But sometimes it takes awhile to figure out what works best for each individual.
From a BK years ago to:
9/09 EX pulled by lender 802
3/10 EQ- 800
4/10 TU -772
You can do the same thing with hard work
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