GnuCash, how do I book loan from credit card, being paid back with salary? [duplicate]
"When you pay the flight, hotel, conference attendance fees of $100: When you repay the credit card debt of $100: When you receive the gross salary of $5000: Your final balance sheet will show: Your final income statement will show: Under this method, your ""Salary"" account will show the salary net of business expense. The drawback is that the $4900 does not agree with your official documentation. For tax reporting purposes, you report $5000 to the tax agency, and if possible, report the $100 as Unreimbursed Employee Expenses (you weren't officially reimbursed). For more details see IRS Publication 529."
I'm going to give the succinct, plain language version of the answers:  1.    Your oldest active credit agreement is not very old You don't have much experience or history for me to base my analysis on -- how do I know I can trust you to pay back the money? 2.    You have no active credit card accounts Other people haven't trusted you with credit or you haven't trusted yourself with credit and there's no active good behavior of paying credit cards on time -- you want me to be the first one to go out on a limb and loan you money? How do I know I can trust you to pay back the money? A retail revolving account is a more formal name for a general credit card.   A revolving account is an account created by a lender to represent debts where the outstanding balance does not have to be paid in full every month by the borrower to the lender. The borrower may be required to make a minimum payment, based on the balance amount. Retail Revolving Account Wikipedia This is different from something like a car loan or mortgage or other more structured or secured debt.   It used to be somewhat common for very large retailers to issue lines of credit to their customers in the form of a store card.  This card was a lot like a credit card but only accepted at the specific retailer.  These kinds of cards are all but extincted.  Now major retailers will simply co-brand a credit card with a major bank, the differentiation being preferred rewards when used at the retailer. First, before we talk about anything having to do with the credit score, we need the disclaimer that the exact credit score formulas are proprietary secrets that have not been revealed.  Therefore, all we have to go on are broad generalities that FICO has given us. That having been said, the credit card debt utilization portion of your score generally has at least two components: an overall utilization, and a per-card utilization. Your overall utilization is taken by adding up all your credit card debt and all your credit limits and dividing.  Using your numbers above, you are sitting at about 95%.  The per-card utilization is the individual utilization of each card.  Your five cards range in utilization from 69% to 100%. Paying one card over another has no affect on your overall utilization, but obviously will change the per-card utilization of the one you pay first.  So, to your question: Is it better on the credit score to have one low-util card and one high-util card, or to have two medium-util cards?  I haven't read anything that definitively answers this question. Here is my advice to you: The big problem you have is the debt, not the credit score.  Your credit card debt should be treated like an emergency that needs to be taken care of as quickly as you possibly can.  Instead of trying to optimize your credit score, you should be trying to minimize the number of days until all of your credit cards are completely paid off.  The credit score will take care of itself once you get your financial situation back on track. There is debate about the order in which one should pay off their debts, but the fact of the matter is that the order is not as significant as the intensity at which you pay them all off.  Dedicate yourself to getting rid of the debts as fast as possible, and it won't matter much which order they get paid off in. Finally, to answer your question, I recommend that you attack the card debt one at a time instead of trying to pay them off evenly.  Not because it will optimize your credit score, but because it will help you focus your debt-reduction energy as you work on resolving your debt emergency.  Fortunately, the credit utilization portion of the credit score has no history, so once you pay all of these off, the utilization portion of your score will get better immediately, and the path you took to get there will be irrelevant. After the credit cards are completely paid off, and you have resolved never to spend money that you don't have again, it is time to work on the student loans.... "This might not be the answer you are looking for, but the alternative to ""don't patronize these merchants"" is this: DO patronize these merchants, and pay cash.   Credit cards are convenient.  (I use a credit card often.)  However, there is no denying that they cost the merchants an incredible amount in fees, and that our entire economy is paying for these fees.  The price of everything is more than it needs to be because of these fees.  Yes, you get some money back with your rewards card, but the money you get back comes directly from the store you made the purchase with, and the reward is paid for by increasing the price of everything you buy.  In addition, those among us that do not have the credit score necessary to obtain a rewards card are paying the same higher price for goods as the rest of us, but don't get the cash back reward. Honestly, it seems quite fair to me that only the people charging purchases to a credit card should have to pay the extra fee that goes along with that payment processing.  If a store chooses to do that, I pay cash instead, and I am grateful for the discount." I have a CapitalOne credit card, and every two or three weeks, CapitalOne Bank sends me checks that can be used almost anywhere (including a deposit into my own checking account if I wish, or to pay taxes or utility bills etc)). The amount thus borrowed is counted as a balance transfer (as if I  were paying off another credit-card balance) and it will be charged 0% interest for a year.  The catch is that unless I pay off the next monthly statement in full by the due date, I will be charged interest on all new purchases from the day that they post to the account till the day they are paid off. No more grace period etc.  All this will continue until that loan amount is paid off in full.  So, I either would have to (i) pay off all the purchases made this month plus the minimum monthly payment shown on the next monthly statement and give up use of the card till that 0% balance is all repaid, or (ii) pay interest on new purchases.   It might be worth checking on the CapitalOne Credit Card site if such an offer is available to you.  If so, get a check from them, pay off the invoice using that check (actually, I would strongly recommend depositing the money in your local bank and writing them your personal check for the amount to be paid), and then pay off next month's bill in full, etc. A lender will look at three things when giving a loan: Income. Do you make enough money each month to afford the payments. They will subtract from your income any other loans, credit card debt, student loan debt, mortgage. They will also figure in your housing costs. Your Collateral. For a mortgage the collateral is the house, for a car loan it is the car. They will only give you a loan to a specific percentage of the value of the collateral. Your money in the bank isn't collateral, but it can serve as a down payment on the loan.  Your Credit score. This is a measure of how well you handle credit. The longer the history the better. Using credit wisely is better than not using the credit you have.  If you don't have a credit card, get one. Start with your current bank. You have a history with them. If they won't help you join a credit union. Another source of car loans is the auto dealer. Though their rates can be high. Make sure that the purchase price doesn't require a monthly payment too high for your income. Good rules of thumb for monthly payments are 25% for housing and 10% for all other loans combined. Even a person with perfect credit can't get a loan for more than the bank thinks they can afford. Note: Don't drain all your savings, you will need it to pay for the unexpected expenses in life. You might think you have enough cash to pay off the student loan or to make a big down payment, but you don't want to stretch yourself too thin. I second the vote for GnuCash. It runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac. It is double-entry accounting, so there is a little bit of a learning curve, but it sounds like you should probably have something a little more powerful than Mint for your situation. After doing some investigating, my employers contract with the credit card company has a clause that basically specifies that despite my name being on the credit card, and bills being sent to me, all liability is on the company. Additionally, the employer reserves the right to garnish wages in the event of a balance on the card. So it looks like it won't affect my credit score. I appreciate all of the advice.