How to correctly pay your credit cards?? help

[Anonymous]

So ive been looking through some of the forums here and cant seem to find what im looking for. maybe someone with awesome experience could help!

So i have 2 secured credit cards and one unsecured card, all very low CL (rebuilding). Question is how do i properly pay my cards to keep the UTLZ that is being reported low? Do i PIF on my statement due date? Or do i PIF before i even receive my statement in the mail so that when the statemet shows up in my mail box its a VERY low amount? (meaning im using my card throughout the months and making multiple payments throughout the month). or how does this work?? When and what do the cards report to the bureaus

thanks guys!

[RonM21]

Hi again Luna. You can look up the "AZEO" method within these forums. What you do is pay off the balance to all of your cards except one down to $0 before the statement cuts. You'll need to find out your cycle end dates to do this. Then, on that last card, you can carry a balance over (preferably maybe 9% or lower of that cards limit). You want to pay that off by the Due Date. Doing it this way usually achieves the best scoring for utilization with your cards.

Now if you decided you wanted to pay all cards off for 0% utilization, you just use the same above method, except include that last card with paying off the balance before the statement cuts.

[Anonymous]

Most card issuers report the statement balance at the time of statement close (usually the CRAs are updated a few days after then).  If you want to keep reported utilization down, make sure the statement balance is low when the statement cuts... for those of us with low limits, that means paying most or all of the balance before the statement close date.

If your statement balance is 28.9% of your credit limit or lower, you're in good shape.  Even better if it's below 8.9%.  If you mess up and let a higher utilization balance report, don't panic--it will only ding your score until a lower balance reports in the next cycle, so for a month or so.

Note that if you have any Chase cards, they will also report when you pay your balance to zero.  If you're going to use the AZEO method, it's easiest to pay any Chase cards to zero and let a non-Chase card be the one that has a small balance reporting.

[RonM21]

Op, I will also add that the AZEO method that I mentioned is not the "way" in stone to pay off your cards. It is a method used to get the most benefit out of your scoring (in theory). You can still keep utilization low in multiple ways to your liking, as long as you are not missing Due Dates and allowing it to get too high.

[kshurika]

I'll only add two small things: You don't want to continually report 0% Util on all cards. It tells the banks you don't NEED credit and you don't use it, anyway. So, why give you any? Second, if you have multiple cards from multiple lenders, you probably have multiple statement cut dates (report dates to the CRAs). Make sure you know that exact date for each card. It will remain the same month-to-month. Pay what you're going to pay by that date and be sure not to use that card for the few days leading up to the cut date. As you've already been advised, the one card you leave a small (<8.9%) balance on should be paid off by the "Payment Due" date on your statement.