If
you only carry a balance on your credit card for one month's period you will be charged the equivalent yearly rate of 22.9 %.
Not exact matches
So if you're
carrying balances on several
credit cards, pay attention not
only to the interest rate but the
credit utilization
on each
card.
Not
only will a low ratio help boost your
credit score, but you'll also save lots of money
on credit card interest by not
carrying high
balances.
As such, there's no way to know for sure if having added six
cards to your
credit report has hurt or helped your score, though the highly informative «FICO high achievers» study tells us that people with scores of 785 and higher tend to have fewer
cards than you, with seven
cards (including open and closed)
on average and
only four
cards or loans that
carry balances.
Answer:
Carrying a
balance on a
credit card from month to month
only increases the amount of interest you have to pay — it doesn't improve your
credit score.
This is not
only money wasted
on interest, it's also probably hurting your FICO score — particularly if you don't typically
carry balances on your
credit cards.
While conventional wisdom would be against using
credit cards and we would never advocate
carrying any type of
balance on one because of the near usurious rates, in certain situations, it might just be your
only option.
This is the oldest
card I still have as a shiny Quicksilver with a $ 6,500 CL Today my overall
credit lines exceed $ 200,000 after
only being here for 4.5 years and I never ever
carried a
balance on any of them.
If you find that you have numerous different
credit cards that are
carrying a
balance, it may be more cost effective to place these
balances on a single
credit card with a low interest rate for
balance transfers so that you are
only paying one bill each month.
Because your debt won't incur interest for well over a year or two, you can make
only the minimum payments without racking up interest charges, as you would when
carrying a
balance on a regular
credit card.
If you're
only making your minimum and
carrying a high
balance on a
credit card — resulting in a lower
credit score — this affects the ability to get other types of financing.
If you find it hard to do this, just remember this — if you
carry a $ 5000
balance on your
credit card and
only pay the minimum, you're going to end up spending an extra $ 1000 every year.
I'm sympathetic to those who feel great about paying off 5 different 6 %
credit cards with sub $ 2000
balances who are left with
only one
card carrying a 24 % rate
on a $ 10K
balance.
Not
only could this throw off your
credit score's debt - to - income ratio and make lenders wary of extending
credit to you, but
carrying a
balance on your
cards winds up costing you more in the long run.
Having a higher
credit score will help you get a lower interest rate, but that
only matters if you plan to
carry a
balance on this
card.