8.9% is aggregate (all card balances / all card limits) and then there is higher breakpoints too.
Individual revolver utilization has breakpoints too but in my experience those vary based on profile.
End of the day smaller amounts but non-zero on one card is optimal for everyone; there’s some other small things like I choose a national bank card with a limit 25k or less but for most people that will be fine... and literally a yuppie food stamp (20 bucks) on a single card vs my absurdly large total credit portfolio is fine, though I could run my balances a lot more too but that’s my profile which is an outlier.
While I don’t quite agree with Tacpoly’s analysis when it counts (and where AZEO should absolutely be done to ruthlessly optimize your credit report and therefore score) he’s right that the fact is it doesn’t matter if lenders aren’t looking at your reports.
So just use your cards as normal and pay before the due date: the important thing is just to not run up your credit cards to where they can’t be paid off easily (living within one’s means or other names for it), that’s the route to financial bleeding and credit issues.
As long as you are paying statement balance by the due date it just doesn’t matter 99% of the time; however, I will always optimize my files when it matters, namely when I am applying for something when my scores count.
In my case it is about putting as much lipstick as possible but my mortgage scores move an entire tier getting clean and that can be the difference of .25 or .5% on a mortgage and that is too much for me to not optimize for.
Individual revolver utilization has breakpoints too but in my experience those vary based on profile.
End of the day smaller amounts but non-zero on one card is optimal for everyone; there’s some other small things like I choose a national bank card with a limit 25k or less but for most people that will be fine... and literally a yuppie food stamp (20 bucks) on a single card vs my absurdly large total credit portfolio is fine, though I could run my balances a lot more too but that’s my profile which is an outlier.
While I don’t quite agree with Tacpoly’s analysis when it counts (and where AZEO should absolutely be done to ruthlessly optimize your credit report and therefore score) he’s right that the fact is it doesn’t matter if lenders aren’t looking at your reports.
So just use your cards as normal and pay before the due date: the important thing is just to not run up your credit cards to where they can’t be paid off easily (living within one’s means or other names for it), that’s the route to financial bleeding and credit issues.
As long as you are paying statement balance by the due date it just doesn’t matter 99% of the time; however, I will always optimize my files when it matters, namely when I am applying for something when my scores count.
In my case it is about putting as much lipstick as possible but my mortgage scores move an entire tier getting clean and that can be the difference of .25 or .5% on a mortgage and that is too much for me to not optimize for.
@myfavoritehue wrote:Just received my first statement from a new credit card and want to be sure that I am maximizing the benefit I will receive from making payments.
I have a $5,000 limit and right now my full balance is $51. The minimum payment due is $30 and I am not sure if I should:
A) pay the minimum balance to stretch out the potential benefit to my credit score
B) pay it all in full now to get the biggest benefit
C) make two separate payments in the same statement date.
I’m not worried about interest this time around because my utilization, and my balance, is so low.
Please help!
Just pay it in full.
