It accounts for 30% of your credit score, and keeping your credit card balances as low as possible can help improve your credit score. Because you can drastically change your credit utilization with a single payment, it’s one of the best ways you can quickly improve your credit score. In fact, if high credit card balances are dragging down your credit score and you can pay them down quickly, you can improve your credit score in 30 days. Another word for credit card utilization is “balance-to-limit ratio” which depicts your utilization as a percentage.