They ding you on your score if you don’t carry a balance on your card.

This is unequivocally false. I can’t believe how pervasive this common misconception still is:

Carrying a balance on a credit card to improve your credit score has been proven as a myth. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says paying off your credit cards in full each month is the best way to improve your credit score and maintain excellent credit for the long haul.

Carrying a balance on your card literally can only hurt you, as the only thing the actual dollar amount of the balance impacts is utilization, in other words, ‘what percent of your total credit limit are you using’, and for that, lower is better. Plus, carrying a balance means paying interest, which is money down the drain on top of that.

I haven’t paid a cent of interest on any of my credit cards for well over a decade; I use it for my everyday purchases, and pay it off every month—my credit score’s firmly in the 800s, and 750 is the ‘you won’t get a better rate’ threshold for 99.9% of lending.