How does the life time high balance on a credit card affect your credit score?

high time
Taylor asked:

Specifically, will making a one time large purchase on your card that will perminately raise the lifetime high balance a death blow to your credit score?



Comments (2)    Posted in Credit    

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2 Responses to 'How does the life time high balance on a credit card affect your credit score?'

  1. Insomniac - April 27th, 2010 at 1:29 pm

    Yes, it will cause your score to go down because your utilization rate will be high. You should keep your balances below 30% of your limit.

  2. echo - April 27th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    It will hurt until it’s paid off or down to less than 30%. After it’s paid down/off the high balance will no longer be a factor on your credit report or you scores. And your scores should gain back the points that were lost from the high utilization.

    Just an FYI
    If you normally don’t make large purchases on that card, you might inform the card company before you make it. That way they will know to expect it and won’t deny the charge.

    Card companies keep watches on accounts and when a purchase is run through that is out of the norm they may deny the charge.
    For example, you normally use the card for dining out and buying gas and then an attempt to purchase a flat screen tv shows up – they would probably deny the charge thinking that your card may have been stolen.


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