this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026
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No Stupid Questions
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Like, say I spent 2500 to buy some big ticket items ive already saved for, when should I pay off that balance or to what extent should I pay it down and let that milkable amount you were talking about,
I was going to pay it off next week, should I wait till next month to pay it off or longer, obviously gotta find out and make minimum payments so thats the floor but what is the ceiling according to what you've suggested?
The person above had absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Pay your balance every month. My credit is great now and I defaulted on my student loans 20 years ago. Never give the CC company a cent. Maximize your points, autopay your balance on time every month. Switch/add a card when you can qualify for a more rewarding card. Go spend some time reading NerdWallet. Don't listen to 14yos on forums.
I have a 780 score and have helped several friends and family build their credit including coming back from a bankruptcy this stuff is a hobby for me. OP was asking about credit maxing and that’s how you do it.
I have a 780 score too and I pay it off every month. It may depend on other things for each person. I bet it's dialed in to each individual.
Its arbitrary though. My score was that and I had $45k debt at one point due to divorce and a move etc. They only care that you keep making payments to show they can offer you more ways to get in debt. Its stupid to pay interest to get a highacore.
Then there was my wife who barely had an credit cars and no other assets or debt and she was over 800 somehow.
What are the best other tools or approaches that are staple here?
Like others are saying, pay it off every month. Ideally, you’ll want to keep the usage around 10-30% max. If you have a $5000 limit, that would be a monthly usage of $500-$1500. If you max it out, banks will assume that you’re a risk and will ding your score.
Keeping it below 30% will also help grow your limit. Banks will periodically up it. This is also based on reported income, but from experience, if you have a low limit and max it every month, they will not really increase your limit.
As another person already said, the guy you're replying to doesn't know what they're talking about. But what they're saying is a common misconception, and I'll explain why.
-depending on your billing cycle, at some point in the month the credit card company will do two things on the same day: 1) generate a billing statement for you with the amount you owe and due date and all that 2) report how much you OWE THAT DAY and also WHETHER YOU PAID YOUR LAST MONTH'S CHARGES to the credit bureaus.
-for 2), it is a snapshot in time. If you've charged $500 throughout the cycle, what is REPORTED to the bureaus is that you have $500 charged, which shows you're using your card.
You can come in the very next day, pay off ALL $500 and pay NO INTEREST and your credit score goes up. You DO NOT NEED TO CARRY A BALANCE and pay interest (bad) because your usage is only reported once a month, not day by day.
So, people conflate using a card at all (which you should do in order to build a good credit history) with carrying a balance, because they don't understand how their information is reported.
So:
-get a card
-use it to pay for stuff you already were going to buy
-try not to charge more than 40% of your credit limit on the card
-pay it off IN FULL every month
-profit (literally - as your credit gets better you'll have access to cards with better rewards and benefits)
Treat your card as if it were a checkbook.
Hook it up to a bank account that covers twice the card’s credit limit. You can pay it off once a month, or pay it off whenever you approach the limit; which method you use depends on your limit and spending habits.
Autopayments are good — the reason you hook it up to an account with a relatively low balance is so you have a throttle on your spending AND so if the anti-fraud protections miss something, you have time to dispute the charges before they get paid off.
Other things to note: use chip and pin when possible; with chip and pin, any disputes default to being in your favor, with the merchants having to prove why that shouldn’t be the case. If you use tap, it’s all on you to prove why it wasn’t you who made the charge.
Using this method, paying all my utilities etc. through my credit card, I got my credit rating above 80 in a few years.
Will/already do :P