Veni, Vidi, Vinci, Visa or How to Master Your MasterCard

[Anonymous]

iam confused

I have a BOA credit card with a 500 limit on it. I have not used yet. In order to get my scores up I should use no more than 10 percent of my card. Once the bill comes in do I pay it off each month or make the monthly payments on it.

Thanks for your input

[Anonymous]

Charge a cheeseburger with fries, wait for it to report, then pay it off. My BofA card reports at the end of the month, based on the balance around the 20th. So charge your cheeseburger, paperback novel or video rental around the 10th, wait for the 1st of the next month, then pay it off.

[bl00dymary]

What if you pay it off before it reports?  Does it still count?  Let's say I need to charge something large, but I don't want my utilization to report as more than 10%- if I do this I usually pop online and pay it off on the website right away before they even bill me or report to the CRA.  Is this the smart thing to do?  Should I leave a small balance floating over to the next month so that something reports?  And as far as credit line increases goes- do you stand a better chance at getting an automatic increase if you actually use a higher percent of your credit line- even if you pay it off before it reports?  Or do they even care as long as you pay ontime?

[MidnightVoice]

I pay well in advance an leave a small amount for the statement to report.  In my case, the CCCs report the statement balance.  Then I PIF so there are no finance charges

[Anonymous]

Last month I managed to have two cards reporting single-digit balances. Kind of fun actually.

[Anonymous]

Amazing what a little single digit action can do. It shot EQ from 718 to 781 last month. That and $5 might well inspire me to make a high-res digital PNG of the fabled World Signature Elite card, sporting the motto "There are some things that Visa darn well will buy! For everything else, yep, there's also Mastercard!"  At this point, Amex and Discover have been competed out on the global level and thrown to the wolves.

[Anonymous]

Hi, I joined myfico.com after watching Suze Orman on my tivo. It was a show about credit cards vs. debit cards. I was terribly irresponsible with credit cards in my twenties, and I closed all of them in the late nineties and in or around 2000 and 2001. I'm in my early thirties now.

I THOUGHT I was doing a good thing by just using my Visa debit card, but now I realize I need credit cards.

This post has been very informative, but I'm still a little shaky about the details. My FICO score is 663. I don't want to apply for a card and then get rejected - won't that, in itself, lower my score?

I'm also interested in the 10% of the balance thing you speak of. Are you saying I shouldn't pay in full at all ever?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
A note to item 7, if you want to close a card for some reason, you can frequently get a new card of a different type and put the old card's limit on it, or if you have multiple cards from the same issuer, you can shove the limit of the card you're closing onto one of the others. I had a hotel card which I closed because they only waived the fee for the first year, and I stupidly just closed it instead of shoving the limit onto another card. So when I got this super deal on a new card from the same issuer, I had wasted some credit limit that I could have advantageously added to the new card.

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Wait a minute... I didn't know you can do that. You can actually combine the limit of two different cards if they're from the same company??? That's so coollll........ I can't believe I didn't do that when I applied for two US bank cards... I wonder if I can reopen the first one I applied for and closed........ Does anybody know??

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi, I joined myfico.com after watching Suze Orman on my tivo. It was a show about credit cards vs. debit cards. I was terribly irresponsible with credit cards in my twenties, and I closed all of them in the late nineties and in or around 2000 and 2001. I'm in my early thirties now.

I THOUGHT I was doing a good thing by just using my Visa debit card, but now I realize I need credit cards.

This post has been very informative, but I'm still a little shaky about the details. My FICO score is 663. I don't want to apply for a card and then get rejected - won't that, in itself, lower my score?

I'm also interested in the 10% of the balance thing you speak of. Are you saying I shouldn't pay in full at all ever?

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Do you have any BKs in the past five years, or other baddies (chargeoffs or collections) in the past two years?

I would generally avoid PIF*. If your balance is $125, pay $123. Let $2 revolve through the statement period and be reported.

* EXCEPTION: if your minimum payment requires a PIF...like if your balance is $13 and your minimum payment is $13. Always pay at least the minimum on time. Do a PIF...and go out and charge a latte at Starbucks.

[Anonymous]

I don't know what a BK is, but according to my credit report, my last payment more than 30 days late was in November of 2003, and it looks like I closed the account in January 2004. That was my last credit card thingy.

I'm curious if I should apply for a good card, like the Chase card with the Rolling Stones song on the commercial, or if I should automatically get a secured one.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom. You are so kind.