@Anonymous wrote:I also agree that you do need to open some revolving accounts. I only had loans before and opening up credit cards definitely helped increase my scores as credit mix does affect your score. Optimally, three cards is best but do not go crazy and open all cards at once. What I did was to open one card and allow that one to start reporting. This caused a pretty decent hike in my scores which let me be eligible for a better card when I applied for my second card. I actually had two really good card offers that I was pre-approved for at this point so went ahead and applied for both. However, if you are still wanting an even better card, you can wait until second card starts reporting which should bump score up some more (probably not as large a bump as first card). Then with even more improved scores, apply for your third card. I see alot of people who become eligible for cards and go crazy opening tons of cards/trade lines in a short period of time. IMO, this is a mistake. Be patient. Having some credit cards is also a good fallback in case you ever need the money...car repairs, etc. I did open my three cards to help improve my score, but I also opened them as fallbacks as well as for the rewards. I am also using the credit cards instead of debit card at stores as they are safer and have better protection if they are 'hacked'. From what I understand, it can be very difficult to get banks to refund if someone has used your debit card fraudently but it is much easier to get them to reverse fraudulent charges on CCs. That there is reason enough to use CCs over debit.
So once you have the credit cards, you want one card to report a small balance at the end of each billing cycle but you want to keep (statement date) utilization low (under 10%) (8.99%) at time of reporting. This is called the AZEO method. Using this method also helped increased my scores. I currently only have three cards. I am consistently using my Discover It because of the rewards. I have already earned $80 from Discover and have only had the card a couple months. I am using the card and then paying the amount down to about $20 so it can report on my report (other CC are $0). I get on the Discover account, at least, once per week and pay down whatever I have charged. I also am using the other cards about once per month so they don't get closed for non-activity and paying them off immediately. Another good rule for CC is to set up automatic payments for minimum payment. That way just in case something happens and you can't get online to make a payment, the creditor automatically deducts the minimum payment so no chance of account going late. You can set up automatic mimimum payments and still pay on the card as you go. If the balance is $0, they just won't need to deduct anything that month. Good failsafe to save yourself some headaches for late payments.
Little corrections. You can use all you want on the cards. Its whats reported come statement date to be less than 8.99%.
