Sometimes a grain of truth about a financial topic can morph into something that’s just plain misleading. One example is the 15/3 credit card payment trick — or hack — that you might have seen touted on the internet and social media as a secret tactic for improving bad or mediocre credit.Sometimes a grain of truth about a financial topic can morph into something that’s just plain misleading.
What is true about credit card payments and what can help? Making multiple payments in a month could help your credit scores temporarily by making it look like you’re using less credit, but not in the way the 15/3 hack describes. Some versions of the 15/3 rule swap in statement closing date for payment due date. The statement closing date comes about three weeks before the payment due date. Targeting the closing date could mean making three payments.
Your credit score is a snapshot in time reflecting your creditworthiness. Purposefully lowering your utilization on a certain date is like applying lipstick before the photo is taken. Credit utilization accounts for nearly one-third of your credit score — 30% in the popular FICO score model. So lowering your utilization can, indeed, polish your scores. But with credit cards, your utilization bounces up and down during the month as you make charges and pay them off.
You do pay less interest but i know that math is past 5th grade level so no one bothered to check before posting