Hello everyone welcome to industry focus financials addition in the spirit of

the holiday season and enforced family time we thought we'd do an episode on the best and worst

financial advice given to us by family members and friends. We pulled a fair number of

people at full HQ as well as we're also drawing on some personal experiences here

and names will not be named but you know who you are. I'm gonna go ahead and

get started with the this is in no particular order but the one thing

that I hear over and over again is as terrible advice is carry a credit card balance to improve your credit score.

I've heard this a lot and I think it's because people don't really understand how credit

scores are calculated.

Credit agencies really want you to pay off your balance in full every month if

at all possible and this is because this ends up factoring into your credit

utilization ratio which is basically how much you have spent that month over your total credit limit on all

your credit cards.

If it's over 30%, credit agencies are like, man, I don't know if this person can pay

this back, and so they start lowering

your credit score. So if you're carrying a balance for month to month you're less likely to have

that good below 30% credit utilization ratio that they're really looking for.

The other thing that's really important, even if you can't pay off your balance in full every month right this minute, is paying on time.

This isn't, I mean, everyone knows you're supposed to pay on time, but it's something

that I frequently talk to some of my friends and they'll be like, oh yeah, I forgot to pay my credit

card this month.

It's okay, I'll just just it's just gonna be a

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