How is this possible? I recently went on a vacation road trip. Using my credit cards as a way to track expenses. One card for fuel and incidentals, one card for dining and one card for hotel rooms. Before the trip started, all cards were cleared with the full credit limit available. During the trip, no card limits where exceeded, however, they were all close to their limit. This was a 10-day round trip. At the end of the trip, all the cards were paid in full as I had saved the full amount needed. I only used the cards so I would not have to keep up with large amounts of cash on hand. Then on the very next credit score update, I lost 80 points. Why? This has knocked my score down lower than it was when I started this credit-building. All the work in improvements to the score is gone.
Like others, I would only purchase and spend what I could afford with the cash and savings on hand. This trip is no different. I could have just used my bank card to pay for everything instead of exercising the use of the credit cards. The balances carried less than 14 days then responsibly and promptly paid in full. And for my crimes of using them, I get docked 80 points. I thought keeping a balance of less than 30% was a good thing. In this case, the balance was zero.
Can anyone explain this to me? Is it better to just keep using my debit card to pay for all expenses and just put the credit cards in the desk drawer? But isn't that what got me into this mess in the first place? Not using credit cards is bad, using credit cards is bad. The credit cards are kind of a pain. All I am doing is using it to pay for an item, then having to go in just to pay it right off on payday. I've doubled the number of financial transactions for every purchase.
This was a complete buzzkill to an otherwise wonderful vacation getaway.
