@Anonymous wrote:
Yeah... oops
That's a bummer. They just approved me for a $5k limit. None the less, my statement was $600 should I pay it off in total or leave a little balance. I prefer to pay it, but what helps my credit score?
(1) Do you have a 0% APR?
(2) Are you constrained for money?
If the answer to both of the above is "No", then pay off the entire $600 in full. "Leaving a balance unpaid" can only incur interest (when not a 0% APR) and does nothing to boost your score.
As others have said, AMEX may take a couple of months to report. But suppose yours reports this month. Then it will show a 12% utilization ($600 balance on $5k limit). Ideally (for best scores) you'd want to have all cards reporting $0 except one, which should report <10%. So suppose you wanted this card to report balance. Then pay all of the others to zero before they report. For most banks, it is the statement day or couple of days after that, when they report the statement balance. For some banks, like US Bank, the reporting date is the last business day of the month, when they report the current balance.
So if the BCP is the reporting card, use it however much you want. Before the due date, pay off all of the last statement's due, and then before the statement cuts, pay down the current balance to less than $500.
