ripper82

The statement balance is your balance on the statement date. The due date is when your payment is due. Now that you know the difference, perhaps you can figure out why having a zero balance on the due date is unrelated to the balance on your statement.

So if you were going to lend out some of your money, you wouldn't feel more secure about lending to someone who has managed credit responsibly for 40 years than you would about lending to someone who has only managed credit responsibly for 2 or 3 years? This stuff isn't arbitrary. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and people with more of a known history are easier to predict. Just because it sucks to be 20 and have a lower credit score, that doesn't mean it's somehow unfair. It's just statistics.