Thread: Does maintaining a balance affect your credit score?

I applied for a new card last week and it (like most cards) has 0% apr for a certain amount of months. I was planning on just paying the minimum during those months so I can earn more interest on the money that would have normally been used to pay off the card. If it does affect my score than I won't do it.

It can. They take the total credit of your cards and then they take how much you owe on your cards. If your total debt is less than 15% of your total credit it won't affect your score but if it's more than 15% it will likely lower it and if it's over 30% it will almost definitely lower your score.

Keeping it that low won't be a problem, and I've never had a balance before.

Be careful. I did the same thing last year. I've invested for many years and I thought it was smart to do a 0% balance transfer even though I could pay it off. I thought with my money in the market appreciating I would be the smart one coming out ahead. I also thought I could pull that money out anytime and pay off the balance ten times over if I wanted.

Boy was I wrong. Over the course of a few days the market tanked and when you're on margin it's like doubling down. Your gains are doubled and your losses are doubled. Then take that two of the stocks went bankrupt in the same month, one of them being a multi-billion dollar company with a 50 year track record of strong profits.

If you're keeping your money in an FDIC insured savings account you are okay. If you plan on putting it anywhere else I wouldn't do it.

It's in a FDIC insured checking account, it has a 3% higher interst rate than my savings account.

Oregon Community Credit Union, I doubt they have any branches outside Oregon. :p

Credit unions always have better interest rates. I use to be with Standard Federal which was a big bank around the Great Lakes but got sick of all the fees and switched to a CU. They are much better than any bank. They pay higher interest on savings and charge lower interest on loans.