@Anonymous wrote:
I know this is probably splitting hairs, but does it matter if the <10% is 1% or 9% in terms of your credit score? On the one card I have currently I always leave a few bucks as a blance every month so that I am only paying pennies of interest instead of dollars. If I had 3 cards I'd probably do the same, but would it be necessary to try and carry a 9% balance or so on one of the cards or would 1% be ok as well in terms of achieving maximum score points?
While there may be some score variation in the range from 1 to 9 percent, its not more than one or two points at best. Anything below 10% gets you within one or two points of your potential maximum score. Once you have a clean file and stable scores, you can experiment with different numbers to find your particular sweet spot. It seems to vary from one person to another.
