Thanks for weighing in Dean, and a belated welcome to FiLife guru-dom. :)

Of course you are correct about debit cards not reporting to the credit bureaus, and that "the debt reported to the credit bureaus each month by your credit card issuer can have an adverse effect on your scores." And as you well know, that adverse affect becomes more likely once the reported balance on your credit card exceeds 10% of the available credit, and especially once it exceeds 50% or (even more so) 90% of that limit.

Happily, there is a simple solution to this problem. Since credit card companies report the balance on the card as of the close of the billing cycle, we can simply pay off most or all of that balance before the cycle closes.

So for example. Suppose my cycle closes on the Friday the 10th on the month. If I have a balance of $500 on my credit card as of Wednesday the 8th, i can do an electronic payment for $500 or even a bit more that day. That will leave me with little or no reported balance posted (and reported) that month.

Because I have more active credit card accounts than FICO prefers, I regularly use this strategy myself.