Credit Cards affect on your credit score

Does anyone know if it makes a difference how you carry your credit card debt? I have heard that lenders do not like to see you carry over 50% of your limit. I tend to shift all mine to the card with the lowest rate so I have one that is almost maxed out and a couple others with little or no balance.

 

Funny. I had to take a class on credit and this came up.

They have different tiers...25% and under...50 and under 75 and under....

Anything over 75% is considered maxed out.

It's the TOTAL amount available you need to worry about. Don't close unused cards. In the past I heard that you shouldn't have too much available credit. Well...if you owe 10,000 in credit cards, but have 100,000 available it looks much better than owing 10,000 with 15,000 available.

 

So let's say I have a pair of cards and the two seem like they want to fight over how much they let me have, even though I rarely charge anything...maybe once a month. I have a balance that my wife accrued that I have at 2% for about 6 more month, on one card. Anyway, these guys tend to each bump me up about $1500 each year. Make them stop? Let it continue?

 

Let it continue.

 

Hell ask for even more. Your total amount of credit outstanding only hurts if you are above that threshhold Freak was discussing. It also hurts if you take out a whole lot of credit in a relatively short period of time, even if you don't use it because they haven't had time to access your responsibility with that added credit.

 

Say you have three cards with ten thousand dollars available on each one. Say you also have $7500 of debt. If one card offers a better rate should you put it all on that card? You would have one card at 75% and two at 0%. Does it even matter, will they just lump all your cards together when they analyze your credit and say you have $7500 outstanding from your $30k capacity?

 

What if you don't have a credit card?

 

Be thankful

 

Having one close to max will reflect negatively even though you have more total credit. Spreading out the debt will look better. However, don't put too much stock in your score. If moving it all to a lower rate helps you pay it off faster then do it. Having trouble getting more credit when you have that much debt wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

Good point the only reason I care about my credit score is that I may be looking to sell my house and buy another in the next year or so.