Paying off all your credit cards but one before statement generation date : helpful?

Question

Some people advocate paying off all your credit cards but one before statement generation date, and maintain a utilization of no more than 9% on that card

Here is my understanding and information I got so far:

1. Lenders officially recommend you not to carry more than 30% on your card
2. However, emperical data published on CreditKarma blog shows that people with 1 - 20% utilization tend to have the highest credit scores
3. This implies that people following the 9% strategy are effectively utilizing less than 9% (depends on how many lines they have open)
4. I noticed a 'Max balance' cell on my credit report that indeed reports the maximum amount that ever appeared on that card statement ever.

My questions are:

1. Isn't this 'Max balance' cell on my credit report a long term information all my lenders have access to?

   Although this might not be too bad as the context for lenders is missing: I might have run a $1k Max balance on a $1.5k card (60%) that got upgraded to a $5k card (20%) later, but I never let the balance go over $1k again

2. How different is this strategy of paying off all your credit cards but one before statement generation date from another strategy of charging your cards in such a manner that the net utilization is 9% or less (No paying off any of your credit cards before statement generation. What I charge, gets reported in my monthly statement, and no card reports as 0 debit)?

Answer 1

The credit utilization will impact your score each month. In an article I wrote titled "too little debt?" I described how by paying in full before the statement was cut, I took a hit for zero utilization. The next month it was back to normal. Paying in full each month. The "max utilized" is there, I agree, but doesn't impact the score from what I can tell. As you've noted, just keep below 20% (and not zero) and this portion of your score will be optimized.