Originally Posted by
rebadc
So what does running your CC's up and paying them off every month do to ones FICO.
If you max out your card, even if you pay it in full after the bill was printed your full balance will be reported to the credit agencies. The result may be a very high utilization ratio of your available credit. This can be very damaging to your credit score.
If you have a card that with no preset spending limit (as many world MasterCards are), you might be establishing your highest credit balance, which could be used as your credit limit. If you max that out, they will see it as if you maxed out the card, using all available credit. For more info on this see here
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20060331a1.asp
The solution to this problem is that you should pay up BEFORE the bill is printed, then you will only have a balance of whatever you haven't paid. However, this only needs to be done the "reporting cycle" before your credit report is pulled.