<prompt> Human: I am a college student with a part time job and I have applied for a 200 unsecured credit card in order to build credit. I am preparing to buy a 180 purchase. Considering that this will likely be the only purchase that I make on my credit card for the next few months, shouldnt I only pay a portion of the balance above my minimum payment of course in order to get a recurring charge that will build my credit rating? I can pay it off whenever and interest is not a concern. I only care about building credit. Is my theoryunderstanding correct, or am I mistaken? If I am wrong, please explain.  <response>: Building credit is 99 just having a open lines of credit with no late payments. Thats an exaggeration, but seriously the majority of your credit score is how long its been open in combination with how timely you are with payments.There is an additional TEMPORARY, MONTH BY MONTH, boost to credit utilization. If someone were to pull a credit check i.e. new apartment, mortgage, credit card, loan, theyd look to see how much if your available credit is currently being used. Less than 20 is much better than 80 in use. More than 0 is just a little better than 0. But the point here is that this is assessed literally just for the month directly prior to whenever you pull a credit check, which has two implications. First, give zero fucks about credit utilization if youre not gonna get your credit pulled for something in the near future. Second, dont leave any excess balance on your card month to month. Not only is the excess balance likely to bring you over the good range of 1-20 utilization, but youre paying extra money for stuff when it literally doesnt give you any benefit. Like, none. There is zero benefit to showing that you can pay 180 little by little over the course of 5 months instead of all at once. Literally zero. Dont waste your money, no matter what the interest rate. 