Originally Posted by
brasov02
I've heard this before but still not sure what it exactly means. Are you saying if I spend $10,000 each month my report will somehow still show me carrying a balance of $10,000 regardless of the month's closing balance showing $0.00 due to the early payments? Not sure how that would work. It seems like a "balance", by definition, would be the balance of your charges that are not paid during that month and carry over to the next month and is subject to interest. None of my charges are ever carried over and therefore never subject to interest and therefore are never technically a "balance". But you're saying the credit report makes no distinction between paying off a $10,000 charge each month and making a small payment every month on a $10,000 balance? You would think that would be a pretty critical financial distinction they would want to make.
Whether a balance shows or not is a function of when the issuing bank does reporting. In theory it should all equal out but it does not. In fact as a general rule the balance reported is likely to be the balance before you pay your payment, so even if you pay in full every month balances will still report. That usually makes little difference because the payment histories do show up also. The easiest way to understand all this is to periodically read your credit reports from freecreditreport.com or some such and study them.
Whatever anyone says frequent applications for new credit do make a major difference for most issuers. A decent rule is to apply for a new card not more than once every six months, but many people do more and get away with it. The problem for them is what they do if they actually really do need credit sometime and have lots of new credit in their files. It's probably short-sighted to chase miles with new cards as a regular habit.