this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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Like others said, I'm calling bull on this. I'm young and haven't had my card for a long time, but I pay it off in full each month and I'm in the high 700s. The only things I can remember reducing my score are: 1. My credit history is too young, 2. I only have 1 line of credit rn, and 3. I had high revolving utilization one month. So now I try to keep my utilization around 30-35%.
If you don't pay off in full you are now paying interest on your card. I did take econ class in high school (basically US financial education, and if it's not federally required then it's a mandatory class in my state.) and while it left much to be desired, this was one of the few things we learned. Basically the biggest lesson from that class was interest sucks and you should avoid it at all costs in anything, wether it be a credit card, payment plan, loan, etc. Always try to pay outright if you can, and reduce your credit usage to what you can actually afford. We would literally do the math to show how much more money you spend over time.
And now you know why you're in the 700s. Give it enough time, it'll come down.
Bull shit. I'm 57 and been paying my cards off every month for decades. My score is 800+.
Thanks man, really gives me a reason and motivation to keep living /jk
I love when teachers would tell me "if you think it's bad now, wait till you're an adult!" it really adds flavor to the "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" questions and all that 😊
Don't listen to the person above. Keep doing what you are doing and it will go up. Especially as you have more times of credit. Mortgages, car loans etc.
Yeah, I know. I just wanted the guy to consider if was being an asshole for a few minutes.
I can totally recognize the fact that I'm lucky to have parents who are doing financially well and are willing to provide most of my basic needs while I finish college, which allows me to have a good credit score as I really only have to pay for gas, car stuff, and miscellaneous things.
But I can also pat myself on the back at least for not blowing through my cash and maxing my cards on stupid shit like cars & designer clothes.
And besides, it's not like anyone gets a prize for winning the "Struggle Olympics" I just want to not be miserable in the future, and I'll take anything I can to reach that goal.
Just be sure not to reduce it too much, otherwise it will lower your credit score.
That's right, having a credit card but having a credit utilization under something like 30% will hurt your score.
Defend that one.
Wrong. My utilization has been under 10% for 20+ years.
What horribly wrong advice. There is no defending it, your wild crazy accusation is just wrong.
You've been saying the same bad advice up and down this thread.
If you reliably pay your credit card bills in full by the due date, your score climbs and climbs. Not instantly, over time. Reliability isn't a one-off.
If you cancel your credit card, you have less evidence that other institutions are happy to lend to you, and your score could go down.
The highest credit scores are for people who have been loaned plenty of money, and who always make their payments.
Deliberately causing them to charge you interest just makes you poorer and does not show that you're a good risk to loan to. It's the front door for ballooning debt, and that's what they want none of - people who get declared bankrupt or have other debt interventions are a massive loss to them, and what they want to avoid like the plague.
my usage decreased to 0% and my score went up 10 points this month to 799.
It might depend on the particular credit score assessment. Mine is always low - 6% currently - and I have an 850 FICO score. Per FICO that's one of the reasons it's so high.
Whatever score the Chase app shows says I'm at 826, so also no apparent penalty for low usage.
Huh, I'll have to take a look at mine. I usually just do credit karma. My score has gone up considerably since the years where I was worrying about credit utilization percentages. I'm wondering if it has to do with how many other things you've got going on that also indicate good credit.
In other words, when I was just out of school with shit credit and student loans to pay back, they had very little data on me to determine my "worthiness" or whatever, so my only real option was to open credit cards and to use them maybe?
Maybe now that I've been consistently paying my shit back for decade(s), they don't put as much weight in credit card utilization %?
I wish I had a screenshot from years ago, but it was like the exact opposite. Like some "Your score is low because your 'WELLS FARGO N.A. XX86' credit card utilization is only at 11%. Please increase utilization of this account" bullshit. And all of the links they'd give you were about how you want to keep it at like 30%.
Maybe I'll go to credit karma today and see whats up. I hate credit cards, and I hate carrying a balance but it was drilled into my skull. My credit score is great right now so maybe I should just pay em all off.
Sorry if im rambling, I took a nice strong edible today.
Edit: Is it possible that the discrepency between the 850 and the 826 as reported by Chase (a bank) to be itself the "penalty" as you say?
Regarding my FICO score, the details on my utilization percentage says it makes up approx 30% of the score, and as you can see in the screenshot above, that highlighted as a positive, not a negative.
The score I see in the Chase app is my VantageScore from Experion, a different credit agency. Not sure what their max is but 826 is an excellent score too.
As far as carrying a balance goes on my credit card, we do not. We use it for most purchases and pay it off in full at the end of the month. So while it has a balance month-to-month, and makes up most of our utilization, nothing carries over and we pay no interest but instead get cash back. We have high limits on most cards so that keeps our % utilization low, which really is an advantage.
On our recommendation most of our adult kids do the same re: using the credit card as a debit and paying it off monthly. I know at least 3 have their scores in 800s too. If you have the discipline, having the high limit with a low utilization seems to be advantageous.
I meant to add I wouldn't trust Wells Fargo with anything given their corrupt & recent history. Doing the opposite of what they suggest is probably better with nothing else to go on.
True. But to be clear I literally just put the first thing that came into my head in there. I should have just used a fake company instead so as to not distract from the point.
Ah good, because fuck Wells Fargo!
That doesn't seem to be true from my experience. My credit limit is more than 10x my normal usage per month and i never carry a balance forward. My credit score is 825 right now.
That's great. I'm sure you have more than just a credit card, and those other things have a much larger affect on your score. And there's probably a million other variables in there.
I am not going to claim to know the exact formulae used... But it's my understanding that something around ~30% utilization for credit cards is optimal in terms of the agencies giving these scores.
Say all you've got are student loans (that you've been consistently paying back for like a year), and you've got a score of say 600 and you want to try to establish credit.
If you open up a credit card with a $1,000 limit, your score will immediately go down to like ~585 or something, despite the fact that you don't owe any money on that card and have $1,000 more credit available than you did before. Yes, it's fucking stupid.
(I'm admittedly pulling these specific numbers from my ass, but this is nearly exactly what my experience was many years ago).
The hard inquiry for opening that new card lowers your score. The avg age of accounts drops with the new card and that also lowers your score. The $1k credit limit doesn't raise your credit enough to offset the drops but over time the impact of those will wear off and your score will go back above 600.
What the OP in the image probably means is that paying off a non-revolving account (not credit, something like a personal loan or car loan) can drop your score. It will drop more if its a large account because it drops the total value of all accounts or the total value of non-revolving accounts you owe on (not the remaining value, it uses the total for some reason afaik) + your credit limits from cards.
The best way to raise your credit is to just have an assortment of different credit cards, continually pay them off in full, and have some other type of account in the mix like an auto or personal loan that you continually pay off.
Opening all of those at once will tank your credit for a bit because "credit seeking behavior" is a ding against you. That's not an actual term I don't think, but opening a bunch of credit lines at the same time is a bad look and could be a sign of financial distress that scares off lenders. So just start with 1 card and 1 loan then open a new card every 6 mo to 1 yr. Then when you eventually pay off the loan your score may drop anyways so use that time to open a new loan so you offset the impact of the drop.
The system is dumb but it isn't incomprehensible and it's actually possible to game the system a bit. There are companies that offer pre-paid debit cards but they report to the credit agencies as if you have a credit card with like a $1200 limit and they always report that you have a 20% utilization and always pay on time. That way you build credit without ever actually using credit or racking up debt.
The only reason I have a great credit score is because I opened a credit line at 18, and have a house, which I was only able up get because, when we got married, our parents and family helped raise 10k instead of having a large wedding. Add our 20k in savings that we were only able to get because we lived with my parents, and we were able to put a down payment on the house. Thanks to crazy house prices, we look well off. On paper.
We have less than 1k in savings, so any surprise bill or breakdown might have us having to take a loan. I've been learning how to fix and repair everything we own. Basically me, every time something breaks. I spent the last 6 months doing maintenance on our 2 vehicles. Transmission filters, brakes, radiator coolant, diff oil, etc. I realized I've become my grandpa who drove a 35 year old POS, but kept it running well.
I seriously don't know how us regular ppl are supposed to better our lives when everything is predatory and something as simple a credit score fucks you.
My usage is less than 10% my combined credit limits are ~100k my scores are around 800-817 depending where I check. Actually when I went to buy a car 2 years ago I overheard the sales guy and the finance guy who were talking about it say "holy shit, she has really good credit."
Edit to correct my numbers after I looked them up
I didn't say it was the entire score (unless all you have is a credit card).
You can call up the agencies yourself and ask. They will tell you that the optimum is something like ~30% credit utilization. More or less than that will affect your score negatively.
I imagine how big/small that affect is depends on all sorts of other factors.
Edit: It's stupid. Shortly after college, when I had to start paying back student loans, I decided I wanted to try to "build credit," so I got one of the few cards they were willing to give me. My (already not great) credit score immediately dropped.
When I looked into why, I learned about "credit utilization" and why you always want to carry a balance if you want to build your credit.
It's fucking stupid.
You've been saying the same bad advice up and down this thread.
If you reliably pay your credit card bills in full by the due date, your score climbs and climbs. Not instantly, over time. Reliability isn't a one-off.
If you cancel your credit card, you have less evidence that other institutions are happy to lend to you, and your score could go down.
If you apply for a new credit card, your score can go down because that's also what people who are running out of money do, not because your borrowing to limit percentage is low.
The highest credit scores are for people who have been loaned plenty of money, and who always make their payments.
Deliberately causing them to charge you interest just makes you poorer and does not show that you're a good risk to loan to. It's the front door for ballooning debt, and that's what they want none of - people who get declared bankrupt or have other debt interventions are a massive loss to them, and what they want to avoid like the plague.
The bigger impact than credit utilization would be the hard inquiry that they use to determine whether to give you the card as well as the avg age of accounts. Low credit utilization may drop your score an extremely tiny amount (only like 1 or 2 points) but the new inquiry and lowering avg age of accounts is a much bigger impact (tens to dozens of pts drop)
Credit utilization /= carrying a balance. I put most purchases and payments on CCs, pay them off completely every month, and my credit utilization is typically something like 10% without paying a cent in interest, and I have an excellent credit score.
From years and years of first-hand experience, there may be a swing of a couple 10s of points when you get closer to that 30% utilization, but it has nothing to do with whether you are carrying a balance and paying interest. Further, that 20 or 30 points basically background noise when it comes to qualifying for new credit.
People get so fucking hung up on whether this or that will change your score by 15 points and how that signals some grand conspiracy. Open a line of credit or two, use it responsibly to demonstrate that you can manage access to that credit--pay on time and in full--it really is that simple.
I just find it interesting and convoluted, not trying to imply anything about any kind of conspiracy.
It's a signal that you aren't actually using your revolving credit, which makes it less relevant for determining your credit worthiness. The formula is stupid only to the extent that the input data is bad. Otherwise, it would be an easy hack to raise your kid's credit score to open a bunch of credit cards for them at birth, and do just the bare minimum to keep the accounts active.
They could report a long history of the balance, and use some kind of historic weighting function, or they could report both the amount currently due, and the amount paid each month, or both. The institutional players don't want to reveal more than they have to to each other. Each of them is trying to know the most about you, and deny that to others.
I think this might actually be a thing that people do (however, kids don't have a credit report til they hit 18):
https://www.chase.com/personal/credit-cards/education/build-credit/how-to-establish-credit-history-for-your-child