Why Report Balance on ONLY One Card?

[jc7622]

I keep reading the suggestion of allowing only one CC to report a balance of 9% or less each month (then PIF), but to PIF your other cards to $0 balance before their statement dates. Essentially only reporting a balance on one card per month.

Why?? Why not allow all of your cards to report a balance of 9% or less? Why only one? FWIW - My primary goal is increasing my FICO score after three years of using only debit cards, just got two new CC's.

[DeeBee78]

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@jc7622 wrote:
I keep reading the suggestion of allowing only one CC to report a balance of 9% or less each month (then PIF), but to PIF your other cards to $0 balance before their statement dates. Essentially only reporting a balance on one card per month.

Why?? Why not allow all of your cards to report a balance of 9% or less? Why only one? FWIW - My primary goal is increasing my FICO score after three years of using only debit cards, just got two new CC's.

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Optimum FICO scoring is based off of one card reporting a small balance. That's just how it is.

[newhis]

We don't know everything about FICO scoring. After trial and error people come to prove that reporting balance on only 1 card with less than 10% gave the best FICO score.

It varies by profile, some report few points more, some report more points. If you need the extra points then do the extra work to report 0 balance in all cards but 1 at < 10%.

[OmarGB9]

Often times lenders cite the following reason as a reason for denial:

"number of accounts with balances is too high."

Meaning, carrying a balance across multiple cards is frowned upon by Fico.

[jc7622]

Ok thanks for the advice, that's exactly what I'll do.

A follow up question would be is there a proven method to rotate which cards report the 9% or less balance from month to month?

[OmarGB9]

I honestly don't think it matters which card reports a balance so long as it's only ONE like others have said.

[GoldSorata]

Also keep in mind that since this is only something to provide a FICO boost that unless you are going to be seeking credit I wouldn't be too concerned about always maintaining it for reporting purposes.

[Anonymous]

To add another scenario here.  What if you have say (9) cards.  You have (3) cards report a balance but the grand total of available credit being used is still under 9%?  Do you lose a point or two by not have just exactly (1) card reporting a balance?  When I check my reports here one of the pluses it notes is making use of revolving credit.

[Anonymous]

So far my utilization has been 14% and under and my scores keep rising. Probably to get those super high scores I would need to do the one card reporting strategy I do allow a a few cards to report zero balance.

[Revelate]

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@Anonymous wrote:

To add another scenario here.  What if you have say (9) cards.  You have (3) cards report a balance but the grand total of available credit being used is still under 9%?  Do you lose a point or two by not have just exactly (1) card reporting a balance?  When I check my reports here one of the pluses it notes is making use of revolving credit.

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Appears that it may be percentage based: for my file I don't lose anything going from 1 to 2 cards reporting a balance.  I do drop 3 points going to 3 cards reporting a balance (and then take a further hit at 5 cards).

From anyone who has posted data though, 1 card will be optimal, just others might be too... so for anyone coming off the street to this forum, recommendation of only one card reporting a balance is good enough.  It's not bad information, and is as close to optimal as we can get on a short-term advice basis, it's just not complete.