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Sorry if this has been difinatively answered elsewhere on this forum, but I was not able to find any more than some nuggets here and there...
I have 6 credit cards with 2-3% total util, 1 car loan, 2 mortgages, 16yr oldest account and 10yr avg history (EX800, TU804). I just joined the 800 club in March!!
I use one of the 6 CCs (a cashback card) for daily purchases and float the balance monthly ((at 8-9% util on that card, incurring no interest charge). Several posts have mentioned better scores if you show use/balance on one card only, so I'm following that advice.
On the other 5 of the CCs I do my best to make quarterly small purchases, let them float a month (showing a balance on credit reports), and then payoff (incurring no interest charge).
Based on some posts in this forum I'm confused--one post I read mentioned that purchase/use activity on a CC is reported to the credit bureaus even if I PIF before the due date, but other posts recommend letting the balance show up with the bureaus and PIF on the due date. If the former is true, then you can keep activity on the CCs without any small hits to your score, I think...unless the activity counts against you evenif the balance reported is 0.
Can some of the experts here help clarify this pls? THANKS!
In my opinion, with scores like yours I wouldn't worry too much about PIFing. I tried doing that about a year ago, and I found it to be a headache - instead of letting the autopay feature do its thing on the actual statement due date, I had to keep track of the statement closing dates, figure out how much I owed, then make the payment. Since I have several cards that I use, it was quite a hassle.
Back then, I was essentially doing the reverse of what you are doing now - I had several cards reporting balances, and I wanted to see what happened to my score if I had all of the them report zero balances. My scores were/are similar to yours, and I saw perhaps a 10 point increase in score after all that PIFing.
Having said all that, I'm about to see what happens when lots of cards report - more than a year ago. After having a CC with a $9500 credit line closed due to inactivity and a Home Depot CL cut by $10,001 (got that back, though), I've woken just about all my cards from slumber. So, we'll see what the damage is. If you don't want to let your all your cards report balances, don't worry, because I'm doing it for you!