Maximum Credit Scoring

[Anonymous]

I have a question - I have 14 credit cards and am aiming for the highest credit score. But credit can be tricky. I have 9 cards that reported zero for the past several months but 5 others with a balance - my question is "Should I let my Discover card report $200/$2,750 or would I get a higher score by having it report $0/2,750?  I feel like I'm penalized sometimes when my cards report zero or a reduced balance.

My other cards have higher utilization but over the next 6 months I will work to reduce that utilization to get it closer to 29% on all cards that now carry a balance:

Cards with a balance are:

12,814/15,500

8,487/10,500

8,353/10,000

6,050/7,500

2,932/14,000

With these remaining as they are should I completely pay off my Discover card to zero or allow $200 to report out of $2,750 CL? 

thanks for your assistance 

[Horseshoez]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have a question - I have 14 credit cards and am aiming for the highest credit score. But credit can be tricky. I have 9 cards that reported zero for the past several months but 5 others with a balance - my question is "Should I let my Discover card report $200/$2,750 or would I get a higher score by having it report $0/2,750?  I feel like I'm penalized sometimes when my cards report zero or a reduced balance.

My other cards have higher utilization but over the next 6 months I will work to reduce that utilization to get it closer to 29% on all cards that now carry a balance:

Cards with a balance are:

12,814/15,500

8,487/10,500

8,353/10,000

6,050/7,500

2,932/14,000

With these remaining as they are should I completely pay off my Discover card to zero or allow $200 to report out of $2,750 CL? 

thanks for your assistance 

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As a general rule, with that many balances, paying your Discover card to zero shouldn't impact your scores one way or another.  Or, said another way, even though you have nine cards reporting zero, the five with balances, especially the four with high utilization, are by far the biggest drag on your scores.

[Anonymous]

Yes. You are correct. They are keeping my scores down by at least 15 points or more but I will work some OT in the coming months to reduce those balances. Thanks. 🙏😊

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have a question - I have 14 credit cards and am aiming for the highest credit score. But credit can be tricky. I have 9 cards that reported zero for the past several months but 5 others with a balance - my question is "Should I let my Discover card report $200/$2,750 or would I get a higher score by having it report $0/2,750?  I feel like I'm penalized sometimes when my cards report zero or a reduced balance.

My other cards have higher utilization but over the next 6 months I will work to reduce that utilization to get it closer to 29% on all cards that now carry a balance:

Cards with a balance are:

12,814/15,500

8,487/10,500

8,353/10,000

6,050/7,500

2,932/14,000

With these remaining as they are should I completely pay off my Discover card to zero or allow $200 to report out of $2,750 CL? 

thanks for your assistance 

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Best practice is to have (a) each revolving account reporting at 28% or less, and (b) as many as possible reporting at zero (except at least one card reporting a small balance).

Having the Discover card report at zero might or might not help, but definitely couldn't hurt.

[Anonymous]

Less accounts with a balance will be better for your score.  Also just lowering your utilization in general.  Almost $40k in revolving debt is a lot and can hold your scores down.

[Anonymous]

If you are trying to improve you F8 scores paying down those high utilization cards to <69% utilization could gain you some nice improvements. With no change to my overall utilization (28%) but letting one card report 86% utilization I saw a 20 point drop, letting a second card report 89% utilization I saw an additional 10 point drop, again no change to overall utilization. So you should see point gains once your cards cross below the 70% utilization threshold.

If you are trying to improvemortgage scores you won't likely see such a large increase from paying down individual cards, those scores would benefit from paying off as many cards as possible. During my testing I have seen almost no change to my EX2 score. With the card reporting 86% utilization I saw no score change. With the card reporting 89% utilization I saw a 6 point drop on EX2, not sure if this point drop came from EX2 considering the card maxed or from having 2 cards report over 69% uti.