When you are applying for a new credit card or mortgage or the like do creditors get your current credit balances as of the actual day they submit their inquiry or do they only get the credit balances as of the last statement closing date, which may have been as much as 30 days earlier? If the latter, then it would make sense to pay the full balance due on the exact statement closing date so that your new statement balance the next day is always $0. If the former, then you would be better off paying your balance in full right before applying for a new card, loan, etc., or at least making periodic payments during the statment period to make sure the balance never gets too high at any time. Given the earlier post about very low bank interest rates making interest earned a non-issue the above strategy choices seem to make sense unless you are talking about very large credit account balances where even a very low bank interest rate could make it worthwhile to hold off paying your credit card bills until the payment due date.