DH and I have 2 credit cards. Both are now with Chase, as they have switched hands in the past few months.

Credit card #1 =
Balance of $2600.00. Minimum payment $55.00.
I called today and it said that no payment is due at this time.
We always double or triple the minimum payment on credit cards.
Is it possible that because we did that, there is no payment due this month?? (Not that it makes a difference, we are still sending them a payment.)

Credit card #2 =
Balance of $382.00. I have no idea what the minimum payment is, and don't really care.
Is it better to pay off the entire balance of this credit card, or pay $350.00 and leave the extra $32 to carry on until next month? Or will credit card companies get scared and cut the credit line (because we have a history of paying the entire balance, or leaving just a small amount to carry on to the next month)?
I ask because this credit card has a huge credit line (to us) of $7,000.00. This is important to us, as our dog may need surgery at any time, and the surgery would cost around $6,000.00. We plan on, if surgery is needed, putting the entire surgery on the credit card. So keeping the balance and the credit card company happy is important to me.

Both credit cards have an APR of less than 10%.

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"Yesterday my life was duller, now everything's technicolor!"

If you pay off a credit card, it will affect your credit score negatively. Some people have had their cards cancelled for not using them. I would try to leave a small balance on that card to keep it from getting cancelled and put your extra payments towards the larger balance.

Try to do without the credit cards. With the way the credit cards are treating their customers, they are NOT to be trusted. If you have $7000.00 worth of credit, can you imagine what the interest/payments would be IF you used it? Start saving up now for your dog's surgery and pay CASH for it. Pay the credit cards off and be done with them for good!

I would advise you to look at this website -- Real Debt Help - Get out of debt with Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover Plan. . This guy has helped so many people.

I pay off all my credit cards every month so I'm not help...sorry. I have excellent credit (over 800) so it doesn't seem that credit is adversely effected by paying off my cards each month.

I've never had a credit card lower my limit because I paid it off but I do know cards are doing weird things now. I would try to pay off my cards and start putting away money into an account to pay for the surgery if/when you need to pay for it.

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

There is a credit type of thing for medical things, only. I think someone on here mentioned it before, and I never gave it a second thought until my dog needed surgery a couple weeks ago.
The first 3 months are interest free. It is worth a look into. CreditCare.com | Credit Counseling & Credit Monitoring Services is the web address

As far as credit cards go, I agree with just paying them off. I don't agree that paying them off hurts your credit. You do need to have shown payment history on debt at some point in your life. I would recommend you pull your credit report (it is free to do annualy) and then request your FICO score. There is a charge for this, but, it is well worth the $15 or so dollars to know where you stand with creditors.

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Doing the right thing isn't always the same as doing the easy thing.

Paying them off does not hurt your credit. It most certainly does affect your credit score.

DH and I had a credit card with a credit limit of 15,000. When we 1st got the card 5 years ago we didn't use it for the 1st 2 years. Then we put a balance from a different credit card on this because the APR was lower than what we were paying. For the last 2 years we have not touched the credit card only making payments. 6 months ago we got a letter telling us out credit limit was dropping from 15,000 to get this 1900.00 WHAT WE OWED on the credit card. I was SOOO PISSED ! we only had 1900.00 to pay off and I had plans to use this card to buy a pop up camper this summer. ( can we say thats out the window now ). We do have another credit card with 12,000 credit limit, but we have not used that card in a year now. I'm scared to death to touch it now because they may increase the APR if I do ( it stands at 3% APR ) Any hoot, When we called the company that lowered our limit we were told it's because the card had not been used in 2 years. I then said but we put a balance of 3500.00 on it and was paying it down so how could they say it wasn't being used ? she said it needed to be used at least once every few months in order for the company to say it was an open account. I told her tell ya what. we have 1900.00 more to pay off. once this is paid off you can shove your credit card I'll be requesting this account to be closed. THAT'S when she piped up and said, well if you want an increase after paying off the balance all you need to do is call us up and request it. I told her you got to be kidding me. What place a balance of 10.000.00( the cost of the camper) on it so you people can lower the limit causing us to be OVER the credit limit forget that. I'll stick to closing the account. So in our case it was better for us to pay and use the card that let it sit paying the min balance for the last 2 years. We honesty thought by paying the min balance and keeping the account in good standings was helping us. never would have dreamed it was hurting us.

We are currently saving for the "just in case" surgery. But it does take a while to save up $6,000.00.

The credit card is what would be used, should she need surgery tomorrow or next week.

We are working towards paying off DH's credit card completely, but we need to keep my card clear as well (I have been charging vet visits on it, thus the balance). And my card being close to a $0 balance is highest priority.

Thanks for the info!! I appreciate it. And will be sure to carry at least a small balance on each card every month. Like I said, I don't want anything to happen to my line of credit.

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"Yesterday my life was duller, now everything's technicolor!"

Is there a bill that you could have charged to that card every month? Something small that you are paying every month anyway? I did that with our TIVO ($12 month). . .then you can at least say that you are using it every month and paying it.

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"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

It does not hurt your credit to pay it off entirely. My husband and I have been doing this since we've been married and we have extremely high credit scores (just under 800), also, the credit companies have never dropped our credit amount. I wouldn't worry about it. Pay it off, rather than pay interest.

I would have to disagree with you. We have paid off plenty of credit cards, and I would not say it has negatively effected our credit score. Also, SexySmurf says that she pays hers off every month and has a score of over 800. I am assuming she is referring to her FICO score.

myFICO - FICO Credit Scores | Get a Free Credit Report Online This sight has a pie chart with the breakdown of how they use your credit to compute your FICO score.

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Doing the right thing isn't always the same as doing the easy thing.

I am sorry to hear of your dog needing surgery ....I would pay off the one card as fast as you can. I hope your dog comes out ok .

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Live, Love, Laugh

Actually, it does hurt your credit score to pay off an account. To get an ideal score, you should owe less than 10% of your available credit limit. It does not have the same negative effect as being late on payments or having a repossession or bankruptcy. There are lots of little factors that keep people from a perfect score. This is just one.

Nobody should feel hurt if their credit line is lowered. Banks are doing everything they can to bring money in and keep money from going out. American Express, for instance, has lowered credit limits because the borrower shopped at Wal Mart.

Be careful they don't cancel it. We had a Sear's card that we paid off recently. DH went to charge something and it had been canceled because we paid it off.

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Kim

We just refi'd our house and our loan docs have our credit report. In it, Experian says my "credit score" is 817 and the range is 300-850. It doesn't say FICO. The other two agencies have me at 809 "credit score". So, not sure if that means FICO or not since the word credit score is there. In any case we use our credit cards all the time. We just pay them off every month. Only debt is house and one car.

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

From Suze Orman's website:

You don't improve your credit worthiness by carrying balances forward from month to month (as opposed to paying each bill in full), but lenders may be more likely to offer credit to people who carry balances because they have a history of paying interest on their accounts.

Honestly, I still disagree with this. I don't know where you are getting your information from, but everything I've always read says the opposite. It's better to pay them off monthly, that way they can't cancel it because you are still using it, for whatever revolving things you have, like a cell phone or something, then sometimes big purchases, but pay off monthly. Maybe it's going to make your credit score 5 points lower than if you carried a balance, but is it worth the interest you would be paying? I don't think so. And with some of us with quite high scores that DO pay off monthly, I think that goes without saying that it's not hurting our credit scores.

Ditto here. We've paid ours off every month for 15 years and we have excellent credit. Perhaps you need a history of paying it off every month? In fact, just last month they RAISED our limit, which was already plenty high enough. We did not ask them to, we just got a letter in the mail.

We recently refinanced our house (in December) and our credit score is over 800 as well. We were told in order to get closer to perfect we needed to take out MORE available credit than we currently had. We had been talking about getting another credit card anyway, so we went ahead and did that.

Lisa

Lisa

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"It's not having what you want,
It's wanting what you've got"

It is very much the same for us. I've only had my limit increased, we pay every month in full. I use the Discover for the benefits and have for years. Our credit is excellent although I haven't gotten a loan in 9 years so I can't tell you current FICO.

I have gotten two friends out of debt and taught them "my" basics for money management. So "my" basic for you is to pay off the card with the lower balance first. Keep paying down the other card. I would do it this way for simplicity to only have the one card. Never send the minimum, you will never get out of the hole.

dl

Paying off your credit cards is not a big ding, but, it does adversely affect your score.

I guess that's why I am 817 instead of 850 LOL Good enough for me

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

Exactly. Not everything that affects your score is something you need to do anything about.

This is why I wouldn't carry a balance every month just to get every possible point.

I have no clue what our score is. I do assume it just took a hit last month because I screwed up (well, DH and I did - he wrote a check and I thought it was out of one account, but it was actually out of our other account, and we ended up overdrawn - the bank covered the three checks that went through but charged us a hefty $28/each! So sad given that not only did we have plenty in the bank to cover it in the other account, but we also had checks that needed deposited to the overdrawn account that I could've run down to the bank!)... and I also had a late credit card payment on an Amazon account we'd just opened in December (because there was a $50 credit on your first purchase). I think the bill got delayed in the mail, because the statement was cut the 14th of Jan., it arrived at our house the 1st of Feb., I opened it on the 5th of Feb. when I sat down to pay bills, and it had been due the day before. Never in my wildest dreams did I assume that I bill I'd only had in my possession for four days would become past due! I called and complained and got a one time courtesy credit for the late fee.... but still, the lateness probably dinged our score. Grrrr! I don't think we've had issues like those for 10-15 years.

Anyway...! My understanding is that the FICO score could also be called the "How much money are we likely to make from you?" score. It's not about how likely you are to repay your debts quickly - it's about how much interest they'll get from you over the long haul. If it doesn't look like creditors will make much from you, either because you don't tend to borrow much or you don't keep outstanding balances, then you aren't as attractive to them as someone willing to make minimum payments for twenty years. It would seem that responsible behavior would help you, but it can work against you.

Too many late payments, etc., can become a flag saying, "This person might default!" and that can ultimately hurt your score, as well.

So...we just don't live for our FICO. We paid our house off several years ago, have no car debt, and keep an emergency fund that could pay our insurance deductibles if needed. It's unlikely that we'd need to borrow money, so we just don't care what our FICO is.

That's what I do, too. I have my DirecTV put on my Citi card every month to keep it active.

I have been using my credit card for all possible expenses (to get the rewards) for many years. I pay off the balance every single month. My FICO has been over 800 for at least the last 5 years (that's when I started keeping track of it).

Somebody mentioned the credit card bills arriving with far fewer days to pay them with. We pay all our charges in full each month and I have noticed that even AMEX bill has arrived with barely a full week until the due date. Of course, their bills have no dated post mark so when they say that we mailed it out on such and such a date, we have no recourse. Of course, if the consumer's payment is late even with a dated postmark, they can use it to lower the credit limit and increase the finance rate.

I also heard that often the company will close their business day at 11 am and anything coming to them after that time is dated the next day....

I don't even put the bills on the shelf any more. They are paid as soon as they arrive with all these stupid games they are playing

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Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.

E. Roosevelt

I pay the day received as well. I actually look at my credit card balances and accounts daily and make note of the next due date as well as check with fraudulent activity. It only takes a few minutes a day and I am SO GLAD I do it because I found fraudulent activity on one card and called right away and the person trying to use my number had over $5K in purchases pending on my card. If I had waited until I got my statement...no telling how much the thief would have gotten!

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

I do that, too. I put the check in the mail the same day I get the bill.

$ 6K for a dog ?????????????????

We had to make that decision last fall. Our dog woke up and could not move her back legs and had no control over her bodily functions. I had her in the emergency vet for one day and night and that cost us $550. The surgery to help her was going to cost around $3000-3500. We ended up putting her to sleep. That was a hard decision to make, but we had to think of our family and where that money was going to be taken from. I would not have put it on a credit card or taken money from our family unless we could really afford it.

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NSDQ-Nightstalkers Don't Quit!

That happened to our shih tzu, Reba, two years ago

We chose to save her and paid the $5,000 for the back surgery. Thank God, the surgery was successful and she is 95% back to normal.

It was a financial hardship but it was worth it to our family. Obviously, not everyone is willing and/or able to spend that kind of money on a pet. For us, it was worth every penny.