Today I'm going to start a test of the "all-zero-but-one" theory, that credit card zero balances increase your FICO score, and that even small balances depress the score, except for one account reporting at 9% utilization or lower.
The reason I'm skeptical of the theory is that a while back I was deliberately allowing small balances to post on each account... then after reading here about the "all-zero-but-one" theory I cut back to zero balance on all accounts but one. I noticed no increase at all in my scores, but I wasn't 'keeping score'. This time I will be.
As of today I have 10 accounts posting zero balance, 3 accounts posting a combined total of $300.
For the next month or so I'm going to let each account post at 1 or 2 % (haven't decided which yet), and see what happens. If the theory is correct, my scores should decrease. I'm guessing this experiment won't affect them at all.
(BTW, if you're using your cards, trying to maintain exact zero balances is hard, and not always possible, because sometimes a transaction or fee posts just as the statement cuts, and even if you know it 's coming you can't pay it because the sites won't allow you to pay until there's a posted balance; so if it really makes no difference, I'll be relieved 
).
+1 to CGID comments.
+2 to stepping up to document changes in your account, and noting overall utilization as well.
Some further clarifications: In your siggy,
Three cards are noted as Business, are they on your personal CR? Reporting updates through MyFICO?
I think Revelate pointed this out, it may be a matter of the percentage of your available cards which start showing balances. So from 10 personal cards (or whatever that number is) going from 1 to 3 reporting may not be as big a deal as someone with 3 cards, going from 1 to 3 cards reporting. Just some additional factors to keep in mind.
Looking forward to the results, whatever they may be.
@NRB525 wrote:+1 to CGID comments.
+2 to stepping up to document changes in your account, and noting overall utilization as well.
Some further clarifications: In your siggy,
Three cards are noted as Business, are they on your personal CR? Reporting updates through MyFICO?
I think Revelate pointed this out, it may be a matter of the percentage of your available cards which start showing balances. So from 10 personal cards (or whatever that number is) going from 1 to 3 reporting may not be as big a deal as someone with 3 cards, going from 1 to 3 cards reporting. Just some additional factors to keep in mind.
Looking forward to the results, whatever they may be.
My 2 business revolving accounts, which are Spark accounts at Capital One, report the same as the personal accounts.
Don't ask me why.
@Anonymous wrote:
My own recommendation for an experiment like this is to make sure that all confounders are eliminated. (Otherwise it’s like a chemistry experiment with a dirty test tube – hard to say what it shows.)
The most important confounder is total utilization. You mention that you have $300 in amounts owed right now on your credit cards. That translates to some integer number % after it is rounded up. The important thing is that (after rounding) if you are at 1% total U with 3 accounts reporting, then you need to also be at 1% with all 13 reporting a balance. Likewise if you are at 2% now, you need to make sure you are at 2% at the end too. Otherwise it becomes unclear whether a score decrease owes to a change in total U or a change in number of accounts showing a balance.......
I'm not going to jump my utilization now, that would throw the whole thing off.
Besides what I'm testing is simply this: the conventional wisdom here that zero balances are better than small balances so long as there's one balance reporting.
My impression was that a bunch of zero balances was no better than a bunch of small balances, but like I say... I wasn't keeping score. Now I will be.
I'm going to go from 10 zero balances to none. If the conventional wisdom is right, my scores should take a hit.
Thanks for that! I in the middle of doing the opposite. Letting 4 report a decent balance for 2 months.(nothing over 20%). Total UT is still far under 10% . Trying to shake things up to get a higher score down the road a bit quicker. We can see what happens. 
@masscredit wrote:I posted this in a different thread early tonight -
I let a few cards report. They are -
Card.... Balance..... Credit Line
Cap 1 $694.00 $9000.00
Walmart $77.14 $3000.00
Target $1.01 $3000.00
Yup, I got a little wild with the Target card. Total utilization is just under 2%. None of my scores went down with the three cards reporting.>>
I just watch my EQ04, EQ08 and TU scores. The EQ scores hardly ever move. TU might bounce around by a few points once in awhile and I can't get a free EX score so I don't monitor that one much. I have some CLI requests coming up soon so I'll be going back to one card reporting for a few months. After that I might let all 7 of my cards report a small balance in the same month to see what happens. I'll also keep the total dollar amount/utilization the same.
Yep, I'd say you need that Target card taken away! Well, good to know 3 won't do any damage.
Should be testable on $2 per tradeline; read elsewhere some lenders round $1.50 down to $0 but I haven't bothered trying that myself.
As mentioned in my own thread doing testing (we really need to consolidate but we don't get enough traffic to this forum nor enough testers to really do this) I don't take a drop till I get to 3/9 and that's held consistently for the past year; post mortgage / post app spree once my scores have flatlined towards the back half of this year I'll do a similar test and see how EQ FICO 8 responds anyway on the higher number of cards.
Yeah was me NRB, it's the only theory I have that fits the data: Jager and Jamie with fewer cards than me took hits going 1->2, I didn't till 2->3 (though Jamie got a wierd datapoint lately) but others such as Thomas seem to go much higher in terms of tradelines reporting a balance without issue, but they have more cards too. Sandi of course keeps adding cards so can't really test .
