Does Keeping a Small Balance on Credit Card Hurt Your Credit Score?

You already know that a massive amount of debt could spell bad news for your finances. Tens of thousands of dollars in student loans or credit card debt can cost you in interest payments and eat up your monthly cash flow, preventing you from achieving other important financial goals and saving more.

For many Americans, carrying debt is a stifling reality. The average household carrying a balance has $16,048 in credit card debt, not including other debts such as auto loans or education-related debts.

Clearly, high balances and lots of debt can have a negative impact on your financial life and drag down your credit score.

However, not everyone has five-figure debt or a large balance to repay. You may keep a small balance on your credit card, or you may not have any debt at all if you pay off the balance before the end of the statement period each month.

But can this small balance hurt your credit score in the same way as a large balance? Let's take a closer look at how credit scores work to answer this question.

How Credit Scores Work

Your credit score is a measure of how financially responsible and creditworthy you are. And you actually have more than one -- each credit reporting agency issues you a score. So does a company called FICO.

Other types of scores use different grading systems, but the one you want to focus on is the FICO credit score. In fact, 90% of lenders use FICO’s metric, so you may want to look at the same score they do.

FICO bases their formula that calculates credit scores on five main factors

FICO Credit Score Factors and Their Percentages

Although they don’t disclose the exact formula they use, knowing what makes up a score can help you understand how your actions impact it -- whether you cause it to rise or fall.

For example, failing to make payments on your bills and balances will cause your score to drop over time. That’s because 35% of your score is determined by your payment history.

But always paying what you owe in full and on time can help you raise your score or maintain a good score over time.

What’s a Good Credit Score, Anyway (and Why Does It Matter)?

Credit scores exist on a range, with the very best being 850. Not many people achieve this perfect score -- and that’s okay.

Credit in the good to excellent range is what you need to get approved for most loans and lines of credit and access the best interest rates.

Excellent credit is anything above 750, and a credit score that falls between 700 and 750 is considered good.

Credit in the 650-700 range is fair or average, which is where the average person’s credit lies.

A score of 550 to 650 typically indicates poor credit, and anything below 550 is bad. Both poor and bad credit are subprime, and make it difficult to get approved for loans and lines of credit.

Keeping a good credit score matters because it’s what allows you flexibility when requesting financing.

With a better credit score, you qualify for better credit cards and loans. Better scores mean better interest rates.

This is where your credit can really cost you. If your credit score is lower, your interest rate will be higher, which could cost you a lot of money, especially if you’re looking at taking out a large loan like a mortgage.

The difference between getting a mortgage with a 4% interest rate and a 5% interest rate can mean tens of thousands of dollars owed in interest payments alone.

So it’s worth it to keep an eye on your credit score and maintain a good one. And that’s why asking if keeping a small balance hurts your score is a smart question.

The Impact of a Small Balance on Your Credit Score

Part of what makes up your credit score is something called “amounts owed.” This refers to your balances.

If you keep high balances on your cards and use up a lot of your available credit, this indicates that you may be stretching yourself too financially thin.

As a result, your credit score can drop because you seem less likely to be able to repay additional money you borrow or credit you use.

Whether that’s true or not is another story. Credit scores are based on these set factors and don’t necessarily take into account all the nuances involved in your specific situation.

FICO’s predictive analytics indicate that those with high balances present higher risks, which is why a big balance can drop your score.

Still, amounts owed makes up 30% of your score. If you want to maintain good credit, you need to play the game.

This means paying off what you owe and keeping low balances for the best credit scores. Ideally, you want to keep your balance as low as possible.

But that’s not always possible. So at the very least, aim to keep your credit utilization ratio to 30% or less.

This ratio indicates the relationship between how much credit you have available and how much you use.

If your credit limit is $500 and you keep a balance of $250, your credit utilization ratio is 50%. In this situation, it would be better to keep your balance to $150 or less to keep your credit score happy.

Keeping a small balance -- or whatever takes up 30% or less of your available credit -- should not hurt your score.

Keeping a larger balance can start negatively impacting the number. Failing to pay your balance and racking up debt will cause it to drop even further.

Keeping that small balance doesn’t help. It just doesn’t hurt your credit score. Don’t hold a balance for the purpose of improving your credit.

What You Can Do to Minimize Your Balance

If you keep a balance of 30% or higher, you could improve your score by lowering that amount.

Remember, even if you don’t carry debt, you could still show a balance on your credit report if you charge purchases to your credit card.

Let’s say you have a credit card with a $1,000 limit. Charging $900 to the card but paying it off before the bill is due and it starts accruing interest may seem like a fine idea.

After all, you don’t take on any debt. You made your payment on time and paid the entire balance, which should be good for your credit score.

But doing this could end up hurting your score, regardless of the fact that you paid off what you charged to the card. Balances are reported to credit bureaus at the end of every statement cycle for the purpose of calculating credit scores.

So if your credit card issuer reports your balance before you pay it off, that’s reflected in your credit score.

Making your payment on time also gets reported, but it may not be enough to offset the damage done by the high balance even though it wasn’t actually debt.

If you need to use up a lot of your available credit -- but can afford to make the charges and plan to pay off the entire balance -- consider making partial payments throughout the month. This will help lower your balance so that the full amount isn’t reported to the credit bureaus.

This means making a payment on your card more than once a month, but it’s worth the effort to reduce the balance that gets reported to get the best credit score possible.

You could also consider increasing your credit limit. By doing so, you can keep your balance the same -- but you’ll have more available credit, which reduces your credit utilization ratio.

Finally, you could simply spend less on your credit card in order to minimize your balance. While there are plenty of benefits to using credit, there are drawbacks, too.

It’s easy to forget a bill due date, which can trigger a late fee and cause damage to your credit score. It’s also easy to spend too much if your credit limit and your actual spending limit imposed by your budget don’t line up!

Charging less to your credit card and using cash or debit (or another payment processor, like PayPal, if you shop online) can help you minimize a credit balance.

A small balance won’t necessarily hurt your credit score if it takes up less than 30% of your available credit.

But anything more than that could start impacting the “amounts owed” factor that helps determine your score -- even if you pay that balance off and don’t carry debt.

So be mindful about how much you charge, and either make multiple payments throughout the month to reduce the balance reported to the credit bureaus or reduce the amount you put on your card in the first place.

This will help you maintain a good credit score, which benefits your financial life as a whole.