 TITLE: How Can Millennials Get Mortgage Ready? CONTENT: Keep Your Credit Utilization Ratio Low\n--------------------------------------\nAs you work on reducing your debt, try to keep your credit utilization ratio as low as possible. Your credit utilization ratio is the amount of revolving credit (such as credit cards) you're using compared with the total amount of revolving credit available to you. For example, if you have three credit cards, each with a credit limit of $3,000, you have $9,000 in total available credit. If you carry a balance of $2,000 on each card, you are using $6,000 of that credit, or 66.67%.\nTo help improve your credit score, always keep your credit utilization ratio under 30% and ideally under 10%.\nUsing our example above, carrying a $2,700 total balance across all three credit cards would give you a credit utilization ratio of 30%. However, you need to consider your per-card credit utilization ratio as well as the overall ratio. If all $2,700 of that balance is on one card, you're well over the 30% credit utilization ratio on that card, which could hurt your credit score. Make it a rule never to spend more than 10% of the available credit on each card, and you're more likely to see a positive impact. END