Update

[Layla55]

Hi all! Hope everyone is well. It has been a little over a year since my discharge. Things looking much better credit wise. Started out with store cards, meijers gave me my first card , then Target . Kohls denied me at first then few months later sent email for pre approval invite and got the card. Eventually got Ollo, Mercury, and Mission. All have raised limits from introductory limits. Today cap one gave me a card with 3,000. They sent email invite for pre approval, I was not going to apply to them anytime soon as they had denied me before . That was a surprise. I’m done , this is enough credit for me . I have trouble even using cards , I won’t use one until another is paid, I kind of have anxiety about debt now. Lol. So my usage is low. Just thought I’d update ! Take care.

[shipo]

Congratulations Layla55, you and I are pretty much in the same boat; my Discharge came through a year ago next week.

Regarding CapOne, kind of a similar story there as well, I initially applied to them, denied; I applied again six weeks later, approved for their Secured Credit Card with a $1,000 limit. I *thought* I could live with such a low limit as I'd simply send them a payment every week to ten-days or so to keep enough head room on the card; that turned out to be incorrect; apparently frequent payments trigger some sort of an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) protocol and they hold your payment for up to twelve-days before releasing it to your account. That realization soured me on CapOne and I promptly paid the card off and closed it less than two-months after I got it.

From there I moved on to a Secured Credit Card issued by my bank but with five times the limit; this card has since been "unsecured" and is my main go-to rewards card. Then last December CapOne reappeared with, what I suspect is the same offer you got, a pre-approved Quicksilver card, I figured what the heck and went for it, and like you I was approved for a $3,000 limit. Unlike my bank issued rewards card, which has tiered rewards of 1%, 2%, and 3%, depending upon what I'm buying, the Quicksilver card offers a flat 1.5% on everything; I now use my bank card for groceries and dining out, and my CapOne card for pretty much everything else. One of the cool features of the CapOne card is, if you shop on Amazon, you can opt to pay for purchases right on the Amazon check out screen with your cash-back rewards.

As for balances, I pretty much pay my cards off before the next payment due date, and then make a small charge or two before the statement date; that keeps my credit utilization well under the 9% threshold for the best utilization level for credit reporting. I've seen justbroke suggest trying to keep the outstanding balances at 8% of your limits to best leverage credit reporting; all of my reports have shown more like 2%, and said reports all look real good.

[justbroke]

Layla, nice to see that you're surviving after bankruptcy. I know that you are, but try not to use the store cards too much since they have the biggest impact when they carry balances.

shipo that was the AZEO (all zero except one) method where your keep all your major credit card balances (MC, VISA, Amex) at zero, except one. Then don't let that one card report more than 8%. That's for the best result. You could go to 28% with just a tiny impact but it starts hurting after that. Going over 88% is seen by the scoring as maxed out so never get to that level.

This is useful if you're about to buy a home and trying to maximize your score. Even though your balance may only report 2%, that's good because it shows revolving credit usage history.

Overall the nice thing about AZEO is that it keeps you out of debt.

(Note on the AZEO method. Some creditor may reduce your limits or close your account if there is no usage. Spreading around spending is okay. Just try to keep any balance below 8% if you can or 28% if you must. If there's an emergency spend, then don't worry about the percentage, but try to get it back down.)

[shipo]

I can see how AZEO can be useful if you're living close to the financial edge; I prefer to use whichever card provides the greatest rewards for whatever I'm spending my money on and then paying off each card prior to the due date for the next payment. Said another way, say I charge $2,000 during a month where I had a beginning balance of $100; I pay the full $2,100 just prior to the "minimum payment due date" and then make a few additional charges before the monthly statement is cut (which is typically five days after the due date), thus showing a small balance. Given the two cards I maintain have due dates roughly 2-weeks apart, I repeat the process for my second card when it's time comes.

[justbroke]

One of my cards, which I paid just after the due date and before the statement cut, reported 89% utilization. My score dropped 21 points. Ouch! The not so funny thing is that I had paid it in full, but the statement cut before they applied the payment.

So, shipo I tried to do the same thing with dealing with the period of time from the minimum payment and the statement cut. Only they got me this time!

[shipo]

One of my cards, which I paid just after the due date and before the statement cut, reported 89% utilization. My score dropped 21 points. Ouch! The not so funny thing is that I had paid it in full, but the statement cut before they applied the payment.

So, shipo I tried to do the same thing with dealing with the period of time from the minimum payment and the statement cut. Only they got me this time!

Oh yeah, OUCH!

For my primary card at TDBank, I also have my checking and savings accounts there and, so far at least, my payments, effected via a balance transfer, have always been posted within 24 hours. For my CapOne account, I've only made two payments so far, and both have posted within three days, so I give that one a longer lead time before the due date. Your experience tells me I should maybe add a day of extra padding for both of my cards, just in case.

[justbroke]

It may have had something to do with the weekend, and this is a traditional "national bank" issued card where I do my primary banking. Sigh. Nothing I can do but be more careful. My modus operandi was usually to let the automatic minimum payment be applied, then make an additional payment before statement cut.

But they got me this time! The caught me and I paid 21 points. The moral of the story is that one should never let ANY revolving bank card report more than an 88% balance. And rounding seems to matter.

[shipo]

It will be interesting to see what happens to your report next month when your balance is back under 9%. I rather doubt your number will bounce fully back right away, but I'm guessing it will recover at least a bit.

I shudder to think what would have happened had reporting been different when I had my first CapOne card which was a secured card with a $1,000 limit. My first monthly statement showed a balance of $871.51, so pretty close to that 88% number, during the second, and final, month of having that card I charged something over $1,700 which was offset by five payments (which is what triggered the AML protocol), to bring the balance to $0.00. I'm thinking credit reporting could be messy if credit cards reported total charges in a period compared to the credit limit; fortunately that isn't the case.

[Layla55]

Thanks for the replies. I see what you mean by balance only on one card, that worried me as well about getting closed for non use so I try to rotate. I guess having bills from multiple cards stresses me as I’m not interested in going back financially from where I came . Little PTSD there lol. Thanks Justbroke I am doing great without the debt financially, things are good. Living on a budget that works . I no longer have stuff hanging in the closet with tags still dangling , I have to really want it to buy it these days .

[justbroke]

Another update for me. The 89% just hit my Trans Union and the score dropped 33 points on that bureau. The moral of this story is, again, never let any single card report over 88%... ever... or you will see a pretty good ding on your score!

[shipo]

Thanks justbroke for the cautionary tale!

[shipo]

I've been keeping my outstanding balances down to under 5% of my available credit; it wasn't exactly part of my deliberate plan, it just sort of worked out that way; this is the kind of feedback I keep getting from the various credit bureaus.

Well, never mind, I tried posting a screen shot of an E-Mail from Experian, but I keep getting a message which says, "ERROR! You are not authorized to create or remove attachments." Does this site now allow images to be attached to posts?

So, in lieu of not being able to post an image, the E-Mail had a "Credit utilization" icon banner across the top followed by the following text:

What a high achiever!

Your credit utilization rate is 2%*. Way to go! The standard
recommendation is to keep it under 30%, but under 6% is elite
status. It shows lenders you’re responsible with your credit, and can
boost your FICO® Score.

*Based on your last login date.
Credit score calculated based on FICO® Score 8 model. Your lender or insurer may use a different FICO Score than FICO Score 8, or another type of credit score altogether.

[justbroke]

I don't know about the attachments, but I don't think the site allows much if any.

The advice that you received is good. The breakpoints for FICO, at least as I and many others have discovered, is at 9%, 19%, 29%, 39%, 49%... 89%. You basically go into another bucket when you cross the 9% so you never want to report over 8%, 18%, 28%... 88%.

I learned the hard way, even though I *knew* that I should never let it report over 88%. The bank, just trying to take another jab and laugh at me, issued me a credit because of the way my payment was handled over the weekend. Crazy. Of course they won't fix the balance that they reported. LOL

[shipo]

Of course they won't fix the balance that they reported. LOL

Ugh! Mr. Murphy lives.

[shipo]

I don't know about the attachments, but I don't think the site allows much if any.

Ugh, again! Images often make a site more desirable and can lead to increased traffic. It is bizarre there is a nice bold button below this text box labeled "Upload Attachments".

I wonder if the toolbar button above for Images works to pull a photo from Flickr or other photo sharing sites. Well, here goes nothing...

Nope, that doesn't work either. Too bad because I thought y'all would get a kick out of what our driveway looked like during a recent snow storm. Maybe the link will work:

https://flic.kr/p/rnEBza

Trying a different method (one of the ladies I take care of):
IMG_1953 by ship0, on Flickr

Wow, that worked!