Does Not Using Your Credit Cards Affect Your Score Negatively?

Understanding your credit score is a touchy subject. It’s almost as if everything changes just as you begin to think that you know everything there is to know about it, and you are left wondering if everything has changed and why this happened. For instance, you’re told that you cannot use all your available credit limit or it looks as if you are carrying too much debt and that has a negative effect on your credit score. Then someone tells you that they heard that you have to use your credit cards because not using them also has an effect on your credit score. Make up your mind already; which is it?

This is, sorry to say, a difficult question to answer. Yes, using too much of your available credit is a bad idea because it makes you look as if you have a lot of debt. However, if you have multiple cards and you use one or two, pay them off and have no balance on the other cards at all because you don’t use them, you’re probably fine and that doesn’t affect you in the least. On that note, having credit cards and not using them at all, ever, is another bad idea. If you don’t utilize your credit, your card company has nothing to report to the credit bureaus.

It might seem as if nothing to report is far better than something to report, but it’s not. The credit bureaus want to see that you have credit you use and that you use responsibly; not just credit that you don’t use and you don’t care for. You have to do yourself a favor and make sure you are using your credit to the best of your ability, and that means making small purchases throughout the month, not carrying a balance and not making late payments. That’s the best idea.

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