 TITLE: What Happens If You Only Pay the Minimum on Your Credit Card? CONTENT: How Only Making Minimum Payments Can Affect Your Credit\n-------------------------------------------------------\nCredit scoring models consider your credit utilization ratio, or the percentage of available credit you're using, when calculating your score. Ideally, you want your utilization to be at or below 30% to avoid hurting your credit score, but the lower, the better.\nTo illustrate, if your credit limit on all your cards is $10,000 and you carry a balance of $6,000, your utilization ratio is 60%. If you only make the minimum payment, you'll maintain this high balance for much longer even if you stop using the card to make purchases. So, to minimize harm to your credit scores, try to increase your monthly payment in order to get your credit utilization ratio to 30% or lower. END