First off this thread has gone hilarious. But I did want to add that the credit cards only report what the ending balance is at the statement end. So if you pay off your CC before the billing cycle ends it would show up as a 0 ending balance and it would be as if you did not take out or pay off any debt. However, if you charge 1,000 on your cc but do not pay it in full until the next billing cycle (Grace period to not pay interest), you will not incur interest which is true but your credit will reflect a balance and being current. If your ending balance is again 1,000 on your next billing cycle and your limit is 10k it will look like you are maintaining debt at 10% of your limit which would give you a high credit rating. However, you will not be paying interest as you pay in full every grace period. But for credit score purposes it does show up as if you are maintaining a good debt ratio and maintaining an account with a balance in good standing. The only way this is not the case is if you pay it off before the billing cycle closes so when your next statement is released your balance is 0. So depending how the person is paying off their bill every month it can look like they are incurring 0 debt or it can look they they are maintaining debt in a responsible manner from a credit report (score) perspective while paying no interest in both scenarios. My opinion is the latter will result in the highest score.
Maybe Judgeless will buy it from you for cash and you can just rent it back from him when you want to use it. Just for Fun Watercraft Rental on Lake Travis I buy 24 hours at the beginning of the season for $1000 and use it over the summer about 90 minutes at a time. I call in advance and they have a new boat ready for me to jump in and go, when I am finished I pull up, jump out, and go to the bar.
Your opinion is wrong, and part of pop culture. The major scoring agencies are pretty open about how they score, I suggest you read up. E.g., the last time I checked my score some months ago it was 830 ish. My utilized/total credit usually hovers around 1/5000. The ratio is this low because we pay our outstanding balance every two weeks, so I usually see an outstanding balance of ~ $100. Our total credit limit is ~ 500k. The score is not 'perfect' because of credit inquiries.
Actually I would argue mine is correct. You said it yourself, you pay every two weeks and maintain an outstanding balance at month end (~$100). Notice the key word you used outstanding. My analysis was having a 0 balance and having an outstanding balance just using $1k balance and 10k limit as an example. Your example claims you are in fact maintaining an outstanding balance at month end and a low debt ratio which is the latter in my example and low and behold you have an excellent credit rating BUT then you claim I am wrong. In my example I never said the balance outstanding at month end had to be a certain amount.
A couple of years ago, when credit companies were offering 0% apr money for a year or so at a time without fees, I would borrow the money, put it into a ~ 4% savings account, and return the money before the 0% offer terminated. My utilization was around 50%, meaning I would have over $200k dollars of their money at any one time. My credit score was unaffected, or perhaps affected a little. Certainly not enough to affect any wish I had for more debt or the interest rate. It is from that era that I accumulated so much credit. Let's try to not get bogged down in ProxSun's style label twisting. The credit score is meant to reflect the risk of default. Simple. The report is a weighted amalgam of past defaults, history of paying obligations, and a somewhat fuzzy monitor of consistent money behavior. The latter is kind of interesting: although I could borrow $50k at a time a couple years ago without having the credit company bat an eye, if I tried today they would likely freeze my accounts. The difference is that high transaction amounts were common behavior for me then, but are not now. Incidentaly, my earlier example of saying that a $100 balance is noted on the report should not be misunderstood to mean I pay interest -- I don't. It just means that at the time of reporting my monthly status to the credit report, I had spent around $100 since the most recent credit card statement that I had not yet paid.
But the fact would remain that you did incur debt using the credit card. In Judgeless case, he incurs debt and pays it off in order to be rewarded by lending industry with a "credit score" which he pays them to give to him. No problem with any of that. Only issue is his illogical insistence that somehow borrowing money from credit card company is not incurring debt.
I have to agree with jjpicks. In a recent check , under "key factors that adversely affected your credit score" reference was made to "too many accounts with balances" although I pay each of those accounts (Amex, Visa, and two gas cards) as billed each month, usually paying the "outstanding balance" rather than just the amount due to avoid interest. I figure that at the time of the check, there were balances for which I had not yet been billed, in total well under 1% of my available credit. I've haven't been late with a mortgage payment, or any other payment in over forty years. Interestingly, my wife, who is on all the accounts, was given a ten point higher score at the same time, and yet hers had an additional note that said,"Amount owed on revolving accounts is too high". This was from Trans Union, which claims on my report that "scores range from a low of 334 to a high of 818", but on my wife's those figures were 309 and 839, respectively. Interestingly, they said my score ranks higher than 99% of U.S. consumers, but hers is 100% higher. There was no mention of employment, wealth, assets, income, or whether I live "paycheck to paycheck" as have been mentioned with regard to credit scores in other posts herein. I don't think that credit reporting is anything approaching an exact science.