One of the biggest contributing factor to your FICO score is your credit utilization. This is calculated by looking at your total debt divided by the total credit you have available. For example, if you have only one credit card with a credit limit of $10,000 and you’ve used $5,000 of that limit your credit utilization will be 50%.
Generally speaking you want your credit utilization under 10% to have the best FICO score (with some anecdotal evidence suggesting the optimal rate is between 1-9% depending on other factors and that it’s best to have all but one card with a utilization of 0%).
The problem is that your credit utilization is based upon what each credit card issuer reports to the consumer reporting agencies (CRAs). So if your credit card issuer reports your credit utilization just after you’ve made a big purchase, you might show a high credit utilization even though you always pay in full.
I thought I’d be interesting to see how and when each credit card issuer reports the amount of available credit you’ve used. If a card issuer reports what is shown on the statement closing date, it’s advisable to pay the day or two before the statement closes to ensure your payment goes through in time.
One other thing to keep in mind is that it’ll take a few days for the CRAs to start showing this updated information. Equifax & Experian usually take less time than TransUnion to update for whatever reason.
Contents
American Express
- American Express will report your statement balance. Although occasionally they will report the balance one or two days earlier according to both KennyBSAT & Freequent Flyer.
Bank of America
- Bank of America will report your statement balance.
- It might be possible to get Bank of America to report additional times off cycle by changing any of your contact information (you don’t actually need to update your information, just saving the information might trigger this). Please share your experiences using this tip in the comments.
Barclaycard
- Barclaycard will report your statement balance
Capital One
- Capital One will report your statement balance
Chase
- Chase will report your statement balance.
- They’ll also do an additional report whenever the amount you have owing is paid in full.
- If you call in to Chase they will also report off cycle
For example, if your statement generates on the 18th and you have $5,000 owing on a $10,000 credit limit your utilization will show as 50%. If you then pay your bill in full on the 20th they will update the CRAs and report the $0 owing.
Citi
- Citi will report your statement balance.
- It’s possible to ask Citi to report off cycle, but you need to speak to a supervisor to do so.
Discover
- Discover will report your statement balance
- It’s possible to ask Discover to report off cycle as well by contacting them directly
ELAN
These guys issue a lot of credit cards for credit unions.
- Will report the balance as of the last day of the month
JCB
- Don’t report your statement balance, it’s somewhere mid month but we’re not exactly sure when.
NFCU
- Will report your statement balance
PenFed
- Will report the second Saturday of each month according to this comment.
US Bank
- Will report your balance as of the 1st of the month.
Wells Fargo
- Will report your statement balance
Final Thoughts
Hopefully this helps some of you in reducing your credit utilization and improving your FICO score. If you have experiences that are different than above, please let me know in the comments. Additionally if you have experience with card issuers not listed, please also let me know. If I missed any tricks, also include them below.
Tomorrow we will look at which credit card issuers let you change your statement closing date.
