Credit effects of Maxing out one card

[degs138]

I have a zero APR credit card and I will have to max it out this month to pay off some unexpected bills.  I will have it paid off in 2 or 3 months but I was wondering how it will affect my score.  I will keep my overall utilization under 30% but I will have one card maxed out.  Do the CBs ding your score worse if you have one card at 90% utility and overall utilization at 29% or would it be better to spread it around all of the cards and have none report higher than a 30% utilization?

I don't want to pay interest so for me puting it all on a 0 APR card is the best option.  I'll report back to give my scores when this happens.

[travisr0]

Regardless of CL you should never max it out. Try and stay under 30% utilization at the most.

[jbsea]

well I would not pay interest on it just to protect my score.  Your utilization will go up but it will come back down as soon as you pay it off.  As long as your not apping for anything I would put it all on the one card and pay it off asap.

[Marths]

Utilization counts for 30% of your score. It'll drop you score, but probably not too much.  If you don't have another choice do what you gotta do. My utilization was in the 80%'s at one time, and I paid off all my cards and it shot down to 10% the very next month. So I'm not sure how the updating of that goes. 

[Luscher]

After you pay it down, your score will go back to were it is now

[IgnatiusReilly]

Unless you are planning to apply for more credit, it should not be a problem. FICO has no memory, so it will drop then rise. I would take advantage of the 0%.

[ScoreOrBeScored]

How much are you trying to charge ? 

Which card are are you putting it on ? 

Try for for a cli on Macy's and kohls. And on your WF. They're sp . Maybe it can add a lil cushion

[chally]

The entries below relfect the results of increase and decrease in utilization, with only one card reporting a balance.

I joined DCU Jan 3 2014 with a EQ score of 704, total utilization below 9% with only 1 card reporting balance. That week was added as an AU on a newly opened AMEX. Between the HP and new account my scored dropped to 695 on Jan 31, same sub 9% utilization. 

April 25 utilization 54% = 684 FICO

May 30 utilization 97% = 674 FICO

June 27 utilization 60% = 690 FICO

Dec 29 utilization 29% = 693 FICO

My sweet spot for optimal score is between 2 - 6%, one card reporting balance fwiw.

[Gunnar419]

---

@travisr0 wrote:

Regardless of CL you should never max it out. Try and stay under 30% utilization at the most.

---

This is a nice conservative guideline for normal situations, but there are times (like the OP describes) when you need to go above 30% or want to go above it to take a 0% offer. I've gone as high as 60-70% for short times on one of my cards with no harm whatsoever. In fact some of them (Discover, for one) like the usage.

Yes, OP, you'll be dinged for maxing a card. How much you'll be dinged depends on your profile. But if you pay it back down within a few months, you'll suffer no long term score harm and probably won't make your ccc too nervous, either. Be sure you're only maxing ONE card and for a short time. When you start maxing multiple cards, your lenders will start seeing trouble.

[degs138]

I need to put 8000 on my cards.  Since Chase is 0apr till september I wanted to cary the balance on that card.

I would put 3k on my chase  And 5 K on my Venture.  I would pay my venture off by the due date of 5/11 so I wouldn't owe anything in interest and make the minimum payment on my Chase until I had the full amount to pay off on 6/11 or 7/1.  Either way my total utilization right now is 4%.  IF I put the 8k on my cards I would be at 37% for one statement then be back down to a 13.8% utilization the next billing cycle.  My statement cuts on April 13th so I wanted to pay down some of the 5k on my chase before the first reported balance.  If I can pay my venture down by 1550 before statement close on 4/13 I would report under a 30% utitlization.

I just wanted to know if anyone had experiance with maxing out one card and keeping your total utilization under 30%.  I don't ever carry a balance but I would like to do this without paying intrest and the only way to do that is to max out my Chase card and pay the minimum until my other card is paid off.

The reason I want to protect my score is I would like to get a home loan this fall, august or september.  I have the only baddie on my reports falling off this month.  Already off my TU just waiting on EX and EQ.  My TU score jumped to 709 and I am hoping all my scores will be in the 700+ range when the baddie falls off.  I'll be back to reporting under a 5% utilization by July at the latest.  Then my credit report will look good. No baddies, 7 year credit history, under 5% utilization.