No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
I am a newbie and want to make sure I understand this correctly with my owm situation. I have a securied credit card with Capital One and Applied Bank each with a present credit limit of $500. Both accounts were activated early this month. I have made charges on each card of a little over $100 and in each case I have paid off the balances within days. I had an on line chat session with Capital one and asked what was the billing cycle for my card. I was told that by due date was 2/19 and my statement reports the 22nd of every month. Am I correct in assuming that my objective should be to make sure I have a zero or very low balance by 2/19 and 2/22 at the latest and to have a zero or very low balance on the second card by the equivalent dates that apply to that card
You got the jest of it, but out of curiosity, why did you do two sec cards, instead of one with a higher limit?
Never keep your CC's at a zero balance keep your util at 9% or lower. if you had more credit cards then it would be ok to keep one at a 0 bal. since you have 2 then i would keep them between 1-9% util.
I thought I read something that say you need at least a couple of cards. I have the ability to increase the Capital One card limit to $3000 and the Applied Bank card to $5000 with additional security deposits. I plan to increase the limit of each by some amount each month. and use the cards to pay bills during the month that I would be paying anyway and just make sure I leave a 1-9% utilization on each. Is that the correct strategy
@rockup55 wrote:I thought I read something that say you need at least a couple of cards. I have the ability to increase the Capital One card limit to $3000 and the Applied Bank card to $5000 with additional security deposits. I plan to increase the limit of each by some amount each month. and use the cards to pay bills during the month that I would be paying anyway and just make sure I leave a 1-9% utilization on each. Is that the correct strategy
I have seen the best results with keeping all my cards at 0 percent and one at below 10 percent; giving me an overal util someplace between 3 and 4 percent.
Keep in mind, the FICO score *dings* that come with 0 balance is much more minimal than people want to admit. When I had a 0 util on one reporting cycle, my scores were only 2-4 poiints lower than the whole 9 percent thing. Play with it a little, but it won't vary much more than 10 points.
Once you get over 10 percent though, watch out
-scott
Thanks