Credit Card Utilization?

Wait until you receive your monthly statement, review it! and then pay in full. Using that method is does not matter how close you get to the $1,000. The 30% guideline is only if you are carrying debt from month to month; but may still not impact your score that much.

You are not using it in the best way. Spend under 35% of your limit but wait until you get the statement and then pay it off in one

I have gotten conflicting information on this too, but it sounds like they report how much credit you are using at the time they report. It is useful to have a few percent on your card at the time but you should defiantly strive to have less than 30%

Good question and I don't have a full answer. The credit utilization calculation is based on your balance, so it takes into account your purchases and the payments processed to pay those off/down. I.e. in your example, $100 instead of the $400. I've always heard what's in the credit report is based on your monthly statement, but it is possible they report the highest balance that month even if you paid it down just before the statement was issued. You can get your credit report for free from all 3 agencies once a year at AnnualCreditReport.com - you do have to pay to get the credit scores. 2 of mine simply showed the balance of my last statement, but one showed my highest balance in the past - I'm not sure of the time frame.

FYI, the "magic" number is something like 30% credit utilization, not 10%. So you don't have to make weekly payments to help your score, but it may help you keep your budget/spending on track.

I just ran my credit report and they used 8 month periods and listed my highest balance for each 8 month period and then listed my limits.