 TITLE: How Much Credit Should I Use? CONTENT: Debt Consolidation Loans and Utilization\n----------------------------------------\nA strategy for reducing credit utilization rapidly is to use a personal loan to consolidate your credit card debt. Taking out a loan and using it to pay all or most of your outstanding credit card balances (or a large percentage of them) can reduce your utilization ratio to zero. This can save you money, because personal loans typically charge lower interest rates than credit cards.\nThis strategy obviously won't reduce your overall debt, but can still help your credit score improve relatively quickly because installment debt such as personal loans aren't included in utilization calculations. Just beware the temptation to run up new balances and utilization ratios on those freshly paid-off cards. If you start charging on them again, your utilization ratio—and your financial situation in general—will suffer. END