ramanathan

Don't pay all the balances before statement is prepared.  Pay 95-98% of balances before statement is prepared. Make sure that Open credit utilization be less than 7% when statement is prepared. This is is National average for people with excellent credit. It does not  make any sense to me to have open credit utilization greater than 0%. what is wrong in paying all the balances before statement is prepared? To me that customer is pro-active and risk- free. US credit system should encourage pro-active customers otherwise another financial crisis is unavoidable. Sadly, having 0% credit utlization on an "active credit utilization" will not  yield good score. Having 0% open credit  utlization is considered as if your credit card is not active. But to get benefitted we have to go by the system laid out by US credit bureaus though some of the points does not make any sense.

My Open Credit Utilization is 4%. Did not close any credit card. Only negative thing in my report is 7 hard inquiries in 1yr 4 months. I got my first credit card from credit union  3months back and  a new one 2 days back. Why should it decline when i have not done any mistake.

4% is still under 25%. So, why it is negatively impacting my credit score though i got an A grade.I do have a Auto loan. Since i am new to US, it is difficult at this point to have additonal credit cards.No body approves. I have been declined for credit cards 6 times in 1 year 3 months.

Average Age of Open Credit Line contirbutes only 10% of your Credit score. It shouldn't hurt your score too much. Its some other pattern of your dealing with credit, that might be  causing the issue. 

Don't pay of the entire balance before the statement is prepared.  Keep aside less than 7% of your credit limit as balance at the time when your monthly statement is prepared. And do pay the balance on time.  If you pay all the balance before the statement is prepared it will not help to improve your credit score.

I don't think Debit card usage will not be considered as Credit Card usage. Credit is related to debt and debit is not related to debt.

I Second Browno, NOT ALL SECURED CARDS ARE GUARANTEED APPROVAL". My  secured card application got declined by CHASE Bank.

Chase Bank does not approve even Secure Credit card. They have their own pricinples.So, Secured card is not 100% approved.

I thought even if we spread balances across multiple credit cards, we still have should have the average Open Credit card Utilization of all the cards to be below 10% alteast for a positive impact on score. Can you please clarify this!

ManjuBhati, I know exactly why you got C. You might have had 0 balance at the time when Credit card Statement was prepared. A  0 Balance on a credit  card statement is implied by Credit Bureaus as complete non utlilization of credit card, though you might have payed all the balances for the month before the statement was prepared.This is a strange theory followed by Credit Bureaus. So, the bottom line is  to have balance of atleast 10% of your credit limit when credit card statement is prepared for a month.This is infact a trick to improve credit score and you should also get A grade if you can manage  below 7% open credit utilization. Anything above 34% is not good.