<prompt> Human: Okay, bare with me here as I am fairly new to the credit thing. I have a small credit card limit of 2500. I am 22. I never had more than 1000 on the card until about 3 months ago where I went up to about 2300 on it. I have never missed a payment. In fact, I pay more than I owe every month in random increments. Usually about 150 a month when my minimum payment is around 38. I recently had my card almost maxed for a couple weeks without noticing and actually went over once my interest came out, I didnt notice. I checked my credit score online, using a free website instead of equifax like I usually do and my credit score dropped to around 650 or below average last time I checked my score it was excellent and over 850.I didnt think you lost credit unless you missed payments which I have never done. Does my card being close to max or going over for about a day destroy my credit that bad? Ive been really worried since seeing my score drop that bad. I have over 5k in my savings account, which is enough to pay it off. Should I pay off my credit card completely and have my card completely open?  <response>: If you download credit karma you can see which things are impacting your credit score. High utilization does have a big impact on your score but it doesnt have memory and will go away if you pay it off. Its a bad idea to carry a balance that large, you will end paying hundreds of dollars in interest. 