Paying Off Credir Card In Full

[rockup55]

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

[Burned2manybridgesB4]

You got the jest of it, but out of curiosity, why did you do two sec cards, instead of one with a higher limit?

[DaBears]

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.

[rockup55]

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

[rckstrscott]

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@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

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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

[rockup55]

Thanks