New credit card question

[Anonymous]

I am currently an AU with a $15,000 limit and $400 balance. I have an Overstock cc with $700 limit and $20 balance. I just received my secured cap one with $200 limit. My question is...should I at least put a small balance to activate a report with this cc? Once I show activity should I pay all down to 0 and leave the AU with a balance or should I leave a balance with one of the two cards that are in my name?

[dragontears]

Depends, are you trying to micromanage your reports in preparation for applying for something or are you looking to build history?

[austinguy907]

Not enough info to really say.

However if you're looking to score points you need to use your new plastic monthly and pay it off each month.  

[Anonymous]

A little bit of both with an emphasis on raising my score to apply for a pretty decent unsecured cc

[Anonymous]

So actively using each card every month and paying off the balance as well would score more points?

[austinguy907]

That's how it works.  If you don't use it you don't get as many points.  Now you can make it more complicated and run them up and pay them down to $0 before the statement cuts and leave a small balance on 1 of them.  Since you don't have any data posted for scores and such it's hard to say where you're going with this.  If you're just starting out it's one approach or credit obsessed like most on here.  If you're just trying to get into good habits then just setup autopay for the balance each month and forget about micromanaging things.  If you have a big ticket item coming up then it's a different ball game when trying to get the most points in a short period of time for better terms on the approval.

[Anonymous]

When it comes to revolving credit, I've never heard of if you don't use it, you don't get as many points. 

FICO, Vantage, etc does not count number of swipes or how often you use a card. When it comes to "usage" they care about two things positive payment history and utilization. 

For positive payment history, a zero balance that does not require a payment is still considered a positive payment for that month. ie they only care about late payments (how many days late, how frequent and how long ago was the late).

As far as utilization goes again they really only care about what % of your creditlines are is use vs what is available. 

For the later, FICO doesn't even have a memory, so if your utilization is 40% one month and the following month less than 1% it doesn't care about the 40% anymore.  

So to some it all up, use the cards as frequent or infrequent as you want. Pay on time and when you are getting ready to apply for something say 30+ days out bring your utilization down under 9%.