Credit Card Balance/Credit Score

**maat55** · 02-10-2008, 02:49 PM

There are 3 things main things that make up your score.

1. Length of time you have had available credit.
2. How much total credit available compared to how much you are using, debt to credit ratio basically.
3. Payment history. do you pay on time?

Paying interest has little or no affect on your score.

**myrdale** · 02-10-2008, 03:16 PM

Your credit score is something between a snap shot of that one moment when they ran your credit check, and a history of your account. There are a couple of items they look at for your credit accounts:

First, have you made your payments on time. This will be no problem for you as you have always payed on time. If you had missed a payment though, the longer it has been, the less the effect would be.

Second what is the ratio of debt to available credit at the time.

If you have just sent your payment of $900 in on your card, and the payment had not been processed yet, your score will be slightly lower than it would be a couple days from now once your payment has been credited to your account.

One way to increase your credit score is to increase your credit limit, say moving it from $3200 to $5000. $900 is a smaller ratio of $5000 than that of $3200 obvisiouly. Or have a second card.

Now that said I read somewhere "One account kept paid off will do you far more good than a pocket full of visas."

As long as your making your payments on time every month, paying in full to boot!, I wouldn't be to overly concerned. If you know your about to be applying for a loan for a car / mortgage, it couldn't hurt at all though to make sure your credit card balance is zero before applying.

Hope that helps!

***Edit, yes they look at lenght of credit history as Maat55 mentioned above aswell.. They look for the oldest account.

Credit Card Balance/Credit Score