What Is Considered Heavy Credit Card Debt?

Credit cards give you the option of paying the full owed amount every month or making smaller payments and accruing interest. Your choice is reflected on your TransUnion, Experian and Equifax credit reports and affects your credit score and lenders' decisions when they review your applications. Modest credit card balances do not hurt your credit rating, but heavy debt means a lower credit score and problems getting more accounts.

Definition

A heavy credit card debt load means owing more than 30 percent of your total credit lines, according to MSN Money writer Liz Pulliam Weston. For example, your debt is not considered excessive if you have credit limits totaling $30,000 and owe $9,000 or less. The ideal amount of credit card debt for an excellent credit score is 10 percent or less of your available credit limits.

Considerations

Your debt may be too heavy for your personal situation, whether or not it affects your credit score, according to Stef Doney of the Bankrate financial site. You should have the financial ability to pay all your credit cards off within 12 months, even if you choose not to do so. Your debt load is excessive if you can only afford the minimum monthly payments on all of your cards. Regularly paying for necessities like utility bills and groceries with your credit cards is another red flag, unless you are doing so to earn airline miles or other rewards and are paying the balance in full every billing cycle.

Confirmation

Confirm the debt-related information on your credit reports regularly because mistakes might make you look more financially unstable than you really are. TransUnion, Experian and Equifax sometimes overstate your owed balances or understate your open credit lines, which makes your ratio of available credit to owed balances look too high. Your reports are available yearly for free through AnnualCreditReport.com, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Get one report at four-month intervals, check your balances and credit lines and fill out the appropriate credit bureau's dispute form online to get the data corrected.

Solution

Pay down your credit card debt if it is high enough to hurt your credit rating. One of the most effective methods of reducing bills fast is to tighten your budget by cutting out optional items and put the money you save toward your highest interest credit card bill, according to the Motley Fool financial website. This tactic increases the amount of money that gets applied to the balance, since much of the minimum payment require goes toward interest.