What will happen to my credit score if I spend almost all my credit limit per month ($500) as a student & have high usage to earn cashback?

Hi Anon,

I think it's great that you're thinking about your credit score as a student! Many students don't even know what it is, let alone worry about it haha.

I'd say that since you pay off all your statements on time + use your card regularly, your credit score should be pretty decent, even though a high credit utilisation rate will (I believe) hinder your credit score from improving too much.

Paying off your credit mid-statement is a neat trick to reduce your overall credit utilisation rate by the time your statement comes but at $250 you're still looking at a 50% credit utilisation rate - pretty high compared to what banks will likely be comfortable looking at.

Since the reason you're using your card so much is to get rewards, you may want to consider putting the bulk of your spending on a debit card instead. Cards like the SC Cashback debit card (comes with the Jumpstart account) gives 1% cashback - on par with CIMB AWSM/Maybank eVibes, and better than Citi Clear/SC Manhattan 500. It's also a lot more versatile than the DBS Live Fresh student card. If you look at it this way, you don't really get more benefits for spending on your student credit card vs spending on your SC debit card. By putting the bulk of your spending on your debit card and only using your student credit card occasionally, you will be able to drastically reduce your credit utilisation rate, and this will help to improve your credit score even more.

If you're interested, you can check out this post about how I got my AA credit rating as a student!

Hope this helps & all the best!

Regards,

thefrugalstudent