A key factor in optimizing your credit card usage is knowing what
credit utilization ratio means.
A low
credit utilization ratio means that you have a lot of available credit, but you are using a little of it.
Not exact matches
If you're at the point where you're considering a bankruptcy or consumer proposal, it's because you already have a poor
credit utilization ratio, are most likely late on payments, which
means your
credit score has already taken a hit.
For example, if you have a revolving balance of $ 3,500 and your
credit limits are $ 10,000, then your
credit utilization ratio would be 35 % —
meaning that you're using 35 % of the
credit available to you.
The anomaly that a
ratio of zero is linked to a worse
credit score is caused by the fact that zero
utilization means that the consumer has not used
credit and so has not shown that they can manage it in a responsible manner.
This
means that if a consumer has a
credit limit of only $ 300 and they are carrying a $ 10 balance then the consumer is above the 1 %
utilization ratio and, therefore, is not receiving the full potential score benefit from that card.
Zero balances
means a
credit utilization ratio of zero, so you won't feel the hit of the loss of a balance.
Meaning, if you have high
credit utilization ratio, your
credit score goes down.
And doing everything right
means making your payments on time, keeping your
credit utilization ratio low (that's the amount of debt you carry versus your
credit limit) and avoiding applying for too many
credit products.
Ideally, strive to keep your
credit utilization ratios at 30 % or lower,
meaning you do not use more than 30 % of your
credit limit per card.
When you open a new card there's a small hit to your score when they do the hard
credit pull but that goes away after a couple of months and then when you close the card, I
mean there could be a hit to your
credit score depending if it really affects your
utilization ratio by removing a bunch of unused
credit but probably not and most of the people doing this, you're talking about people whose
credit scores are probably somewhere between 750 and 850.
That
means that you will have a
credit utilization ratio on your
credit cards of zero, which typically results in a sudden increase in your
credit scores.
Business
credit lines are tracked separately from your personal cards which
means that spending on your business card does not affect your
utilization ratio.