10 Rules for Managing Credit Responsibly

The first thing you have to do is establish a credit report or credit history. Without that you can't make any progress should always pay as agreed. And we talked about utilization rate that balance to limit ratio, keeping that as low as possible. It's not about how many credit cards you have, it's about how you use the ones you do have, which gets us to number three, having a credit card, not necessarily 11, but one or two will do and then use those cards to make a small purchase each month five or $10 $15. Paid in full, don't carry any balance at all is ideal. And that will show that history will keep your balances low. And because it's a credit card, you decide how you're going to use it, you decide how much you're gonna pay each month, you decide how much you're going to charge each month. So you can pay it in full or the minimum do or something in between, you can max out the quarter or charges too little. So if you're charging a little and paying in full, that helps build your scores a bit faster. Be careful when you're thinking about closing accounts.

Because when you close an account or particularly credit card account, you're going to lose the available credit limit that goes back to that utilization rate, your math will make your utilization rate go up. And that will make your scores drop for a little while. Typically they bounce back up after a few months. But if you're thinking about making a major purchase, it's better to leave accounts open, especially if it's in the next three to six months or so. Be careful when you applies. Blair said you don't want to have lots of accounts that you've applied for all at once. That's a sign of risk. It's why are you taking on so much that all wants, time is essential. Credit scores are looking not only at where you are today, but what has been the history over time so you can catch up on late payments. You make sure that things are current, and the longer you're consistent. And I always tell people credit is all about being dull and boring. Because the more consistent you are, the bigger the rent you're in in terms of paying things on time and not having a lot of debt, the better your scores are going to be. And then there were a couple of other common sense things but we also asked people to share what you know what you learn, because the more we can help each other, the better. So that's kind of the one I was capped off with that