Monday, January 18th, 2010
What should my credit ratio be for my credit cards?
I’ve always heard its good to keep your credit/balances at a certain ratio to improve your credit rating. What should mine be? I have 2 cards: one with a $200 limit and the other with a $250 limit. How much should i spend on each?
In your case and with such low limits on both cards… I would stick to a simple $20 charge on each card per month that you can pay off when the bill comes.
If you want to carry a balance… only a very small one. I would not recommend carrying more than 10% of your credit limit as a balance into the next month.
This way you can "tease" your credit card company into giving you a higher limit. Simply because you are cautious and they can’t make a lot of money when you set your own limit at $25 per month.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:56 am
The "general" rule is that you should never use more than 30% of your TOTAL credit lines, while never going over more than 50% on any one card.
So if you have a total credit limit of $450 you should not go over about $135 total, while not using more than $100 on one or $125 on the other.
By the way it really just matters the activity, and not how much of a balance you carry over. So to save interest charges be sure to pay the balances in full each month.
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