@Anonymous wrote:It's a stupid system ill concived and ill controlled - if I have a balnce on my credit card at the statement date - in my case 24th of the month and the scam credit score algorithym sees a balance it hits your score even though you pay it off in a few days - I just had a 100% balnce reduction from $50 to zero and I bought a car cash - no credit and my score went down
Go figure.
Your credit score is not an indication if you have money or not. It is intended to determine the use of credit and how well you manage it. If you are paying off all of your cards, ou are never showing any usage; responsible or otherwise. By carrying a balance of less than 10% on one of your cards, it shows that you use credit when needed, but you are not desperate to a point where you have used up more than 50% of your available credit.
A lot of people confuse the credit score with how much money they have and that they pay all their bills on time. As great as that is, the score was never intended to determine someone's bank account size.
Just my $0.02
@Jerzee123 wrote:I use JCPenny and purchase an amount of $50...i get my statement and it says Minimum Due $25.. Ioff the full bal of $50 was the idea.. but are you saying just pay $45.00 an leave a balof $5 so that the CRA sees im using it at the 1-10% utiliza????? but if i do that im going to have a balance + interest fees, which is what I Don't Want , , i thought we want the CRA to see $0 bal??
so now im confused... i do want my score to increase, not drop ...am I understanding this right
That is correct. I know the idea of paying interest does not appeal to anyone, but really, how much interest are you paying on a $5 balance you carry over? It is the price of using credit. Now, don't get me wrong, you don't HAVE To use credit, but just like anything else, you have to pay for the privilage/right.
Think of it this way.. you have a car, but the car itself is not enough. To get from point A to point B you need fuel/gas. Gas costs money. You need to have insurance (in all states, I think), and insurance costs money. So, you pay more than say using public transportation, for the convenience. In order to use something, sooner or later you have to pay for it. Using our roads - we pay for it with Taxes. Using Electricy/Internet/[INSERT NEED HERE] you have to pay for it. Credit is no different. But $5 balance on which you are being charged finance fee ($1/month) for the privilage of (eventually) having good credit, in my opinion is worth it - unless you plan to live "Cash Only" lifestyle. In that case, you better be prepared to carry a thick wallet and a big bank account if you ever plan on buying a house.
Hope that helps clarify the process a little.