 TITLE: Which Store Cards Are Easiest to Get With Bad Credit? CONTENT: How a Store Credit Card Can Impact Your Credit\n----------------------------------------------\nJust like a traditional credit card, a store card can have positive or negative impacts on your credit, depending on how you use it.\nInitially, applying for a card can lead to a hard inquiry. Once you're approved and the account is added to your credit reports, it can also lower your average age of your accounts. Both of these factors can hurt your credit a little, if they have any impact at all. Any impact of these changes will decrease over time, especially as you use the new credit card to build your credit.\nIf you make at least your minimum payments on time, those on-time payments get added to your credit history and can improve your scores. Your payment history is the most important factor in some of the most widely used credit scoring systems. Missing just one credit card payment can ding your credit scores for a long time.\nWhile you only need to make minimum payments to have your payment count as on-time, it's often wise to pay off as much of your credit card balance each month. Otherwise, you may have to pay interest on what's left over. Store cards often have high interest rates.\nAlso, keep an eye on the portion of your card's credit limit that you're using. Carrying a high balance can lead to a high credit utilization ratio. This ratio measures how much of your credit limits you're using, and can contribute to credit score harm if it climbs too high.\nIf you wind up using a large portion (such as over 30%) of your credit limit, paying down your balance before your bill comes due can help you maintain your scores. Credit card issuers often report balances to the credit bureaus around the end of a billing cycle, and paying down your balance early can lead to the lower balance being reported and a lower resulting utilization ratio. END