CC Due & Cut Date Confusion!!

[Anonymous]

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@clewis122 wrote:
Thanks, guys!! It's making a bit more sense to me.

I'm still confused on the 3 days between the due & cut dates. I plan to PIF by each due date. But, if I do so, there will be 0% utilization on my cards. I want to avoid that. Should I charge something between the 2nd & 5th??

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You are overthinking it. After you have a balance, do the math and pay what you want to pay before the cut off date.  That way, the small balance left at time of cut off will report to the credit bureaus.

[Anonymous]

I start my repair credit last july and my score was 519 ...now my score is at 715, if you do it right and be responsible it wil paid off all the hard work soon. Just remember there is no short cut, just be patient and monitor your credit.  Having low credit limit or high credit limit there is no different when it come to on time pay, just leave a small balance every month you be happy after 6months.  

I start out with $300 secure card with capital one, now i stand at $12,500 credit with Freedom I am happy.

[longtimelurker]

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@clewis122 wrote:
Thanks, guys!! It's making a bit more sense to me.

I'm still confused on the 3 days between the due & cut dates. I plan to PIF by each due date. But, if I do so, there will be 0% utilization on my cards. I want to avoid that. Should I charge something between the 2nd & 5th??

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It's not really 3 days between due and cut because they are different cycles.    So say you October statement cuts Oct 5th.   The DUE date is NOV 2nd, and this is the date you need to pay the balance on the October statement by.  Any purchase posting after Oct 5 will appear on the Nov statement, and due Dec 2nd.

Another poster says don't purchase between 2 and 5.   It's true that if it posts in that timeframe you will have a non-zero balance on the card, but that might be fine if your other cards are always at 0 

Two more points:

1) The above ISN'T true for Elan cards, which includes US Bank cards.    They report to the CRA at the end of the month (last Friday maybe) regartdless of the statement date.   So if you are micromanaging utilization on those cards, get it done before the end of the month, not statement cut day.

2) And you usually don't need to micromanage utilization unless you are apping.  As others have said, it can cause problems if you do need to report a large balance at some point, getting other lenders who are used to your $0 on the CR spooked.