bergamini

OK, I admit to being a total novice to credit cards despite being a frequent traveler for many years. I had a legacy CC through my old credit union that gave me 3% cash back and used that primarily for a decade before switching CU's with my new mortgage.

I went through the manufactured spend forum and while that is interesting and maybe something I should pursue, I did read a few posts where I got the gist to be that it is bad to make multiple payments on a card each month. I do this all the time and am worried. I don't do manufactured spend (yet) and don't think my purchases could even look like that, but didn't know if the more than monthly payment was bad or not.

Basically, with work, I can get $8-9K in expenses per month and I'm carrying $6K for a cosmetic procedure I had in October and property taxes in December, though I'm paying most of that off with my tax refund. But basically, I have two cards with $20K CLI's each (Ritz Visa and Delta Amex) and if you add $6K balance + $8-9K monthly travel for work, all of the sudden I'm at $15K which puts me over 33% CLU and so I make weekly payments to make sure I don't get there. I also use it for my daily spend and pay that amount off each week.

Is this bad? Are the banks frowning on me for this? Maybe I should open a 3rd card but I'm getting a car soon and don't want a ton of inquiries on my report either. My goals are to at all times be below 33% CLU and pay as little interest as possible. Honestly, it would cause me anxiety to not pay my daily spend off each week as well.

jordandawg05

I've been paying my cards each and every week for years and i have a 800+ credit score. i don't have the same issue as you do with the credit line but its something I've always done to keep a 'true' image of funds i have in my checking. This is from my experience but i do agree that having a high utilization might hurt you. You can try to ask the bank to increase your credit line if you're putting that much money on a specific card or spread the spend on other cards.

gregsfortytwo

When manufactured spending types talk about multiple payments per month they're usually discussing cycling through your entire credit limit multiple times. There's some evidence that Amex flags this as a caution, but I did this occasionally with my Chase Amazon card several years ago (the credit I was able to get as a college grad did not match my software developer salary at all) and it was never a problem. If you're doing legitimate spend based on slary and work reimbursements I wouldn't worry about it.

Appleman

Since it sounds like you are running a balance, then paying off what you can weekly is probably saving you money on your interest payments. That is a good thing.

If you were running a zero balance (paid in full) then you could achieve the same thing by figuring out when they report balances to the credit bureaus and paying before then.

If you were doing MS and running through your credit line multiple times a month, they would frown on that. (as previous posters have mentioned)

levilevi

Other than if you need a loan/approval at that exact moment, if you pay those balances down, at the next reporting to the credit agencies, wouldn't your utilization go backdown and then the corresponding score bounce back? If so... not a big deal.

Or.. is it that its a constant thing, so utilization will always be high each month at that report date? IF that's the case, and your spend is how you say it - zero harm.

bergamini

Thanks for the input. Very valuable! I think I just need an additional card because my balances are never going up so that will lower my utilization. I'm fairly conservative about this and will get something this fall/winter to decrease my CLU when my expenses are all pending.