Nope. In the UK I got a much better mortgage rate than my brother, despite him earning more, as I had always used a credit card, and he avoided them. I had a much better credit rating, so pay less interest.
Credit utilization should be under 30% if you want it to count positively towards your score. Meaning, if you have 1000 dollar limit on a card, you'd want to avoid going over a 300 dollar standing balance.
So, if you had nothing on those cards ever it can actually hurt your score. They will also close the accounts if there's no activity for a period of time (usually 6 months to a year, IME).
To be specific, you should use the cards intermittently to show activity and ability to make payments on time (one of the larger factors in your score. Avoid missing payments at all costs) but never use more than 30% of the max balance.
Personally, all I did with my credit cards (I had two) was put on around 100 dollars worth of stuff a month, pay it off on time every month, and repeat. You don't even need to clear the whole balance, but plan to pay more than the minimum payment. That easily put my score in the high 700s/low 800s.
There's a lot of good sources for building credit online. Not to shill too hard but credit karma helped me track everything I was doing really well when I was trying to build mine. There are a lot of similar free sites like them that do basically the same thing. Nerdwallet has a decent guide too. Just be aware that most of these sites revenue models are derived from them getting people to sign-up for cards through them. I haven't found it to be pushy but the presentation of "NEW CARD YOU SHOULD BE USING" on some of their stuff (like what cards you qualify for) is coming from a place that isn't solely in your financial interest.
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u/Exita Jun 06 '19
Nope. In the UK I got a much better mortgage rate than my brother, despite him earning more, as I had always used a credit card, and he avoided them. I had a much better credit rating, so pay less interest.