Credit Score: Credit Utilisations and paying off early?

hardleyouth

Hi all,

To give a bit of background, I'm a 19 year old student with 2 Credit cards, one a Natwest Student Credit Card as part of my Natwest Student Account, and the other a Capital One Extra/Platinum card which I only recently got for a holiday as it has 0% fee/load on foreign transactions. Both my CC's have limit of just £500 each.

Anyway, this capital one card offers a small amount of cash back on purchases, so I've ended up doing most my spending on it. However, with such a small credit limit, I'm slightly concerned putting too much on it is going to affect my credit score (which I'm trying to build with the CC's) due to over credit utilisation? So, I often pay off whatever I've spent half way through the month so that ultimately I'm never using more than 30-40% of my credit limit (which I've read you shouldn't frequently exceed).

My question here really is, will using too much of my limit negatively impact my credit rating/score? If so, will my method of paying off what ever I've spent mid-month work to prevent negative impact?

Oh, and something a bit separate, is it possible to change your bill date for a CC? As they both bill toward the end of the month and I'd like to move one to earlier in the month so I get the most of the 56 days interest free period at whatever time of the month.

For the record and to avoid a lecture on debt, I have DD's set up to pay the full amount on both CC's every month and I purely use them as methods of building a credit history and not as a method of long-term, or even short-term, borrowing or financing my life.

Thanks in advance !
Kind regards,
Chris

hardleyouth

Anyone? :sad:

YorkshireBoy

Q1: I think you're worrying unnecessarily. Because you pay in full each month your credit file will show a statement balance of, say, £450 and a payment made of, say, £450. Therefore I wouldn't even mess around making ad-hoc payments unless you need to free up credit for a larger purchase.

Q2: Yes. Just ask them to move the statement date by 2 weeks or so. They may even move it back, rather than forward.

izools

It's fine; I've used my Aqua Reward card in this way, some months paying it off four to five times in a single billing cycle.

It hasn't negatively affected my creditworthiness. Quite the opposite, since then I've been approved for an Amex Platinum, and a Barclaycard Platinum (£10K limit).