“Correct” answer on Visa credit quiz doesn't make sense
I agree with you. The quiz was looking at it differently, as if you had a huge card balance and were making minimum payments.  The fact that I run all my spending through my cards somehow looks like my card payments are 60-70% of my budget. But when you break it out, zero of that is interest, and it's just a budgeting tool. "I took the quiz that you linked too and answered with what I considered ""ideal"" answers with the exception of checking C for that particular question.... The first thing I saw was I needn't have bothered with giving the ideal answer as the result is self graded (paraphrased) as...all ""A"" great, mostly ""A"" good,  mostly ""B"" you can do better, any ""C"" you probably have problems...regardless of your actual answers. Secondly my ideal answers didn't agree with theirs. Finally, neither my ideal nor theirs takes actual circumstances into account.  For instance paying off your debt each month: there are quite a few cards that offer zero percent financing for extended periods of time, for those cards the ideal would be for the debt to be paid off before the terms change.  Whether that should be steady progression towards zero or a ballon payment at the end, would depend upon your circumstances. In short, look at this quiz as a rough guideline, not a nuanced evaluation of your credit handling capabilities."
&gt;Ah, the downvotes. When the headline is all that someone sees before reading the story, it's important to state explicitly the affected  parties. Consumers and businesses are not the only possible parties given a regulation concerning lawsuits.   Your attempted retort doesn't even make sense. Your title points at the affect on businesses, his points at consumers, then you go on to argue as if your title was more correct because there are other concerned parties, despite the fact that your title didn't  mention either consumers or these fabled other parties?   You earned the downvotes. "The new information helps a little, but you're still stuck as far as doing exactly what you asked.  The question that you really should be asking is ""How do I deposit money into my BofA checking account from Italy?""  If you can figure that out, then the whole part about your father's AmEx card really becomes irrelevant.  He might get that money from a cash advance on his AmEx card or he might get it from somewhere else. I think there's some small chance that if you call BofA and ask the right question, they may give you an answer that will let you make this deposit.  I tend to doubt it, but this would at least give you a chance. Other than that, you should probably look into some options based in Italy.  For example, get the cash from your father and open a bank account in Italy.  Maybe you can buy a pre-paid Visa card with the cash to use while you're there.  Maybe use traveler's checks for the rest of your trip.  Etc. What is available and what makes sense will still depend on a lot of details that we don't have (like how long you're staying and what type of entry visa you got when you entered Italy)." You can split payments, and nobody judges you because most prepaid cards are actually gift cards.  They just think you have generous friends.   When you use Visa/MC at a vendor, they get dinged around 2-3% plus 35 cents flat-rate.  So when you ask them to charge 77 cents to the card, you're essentially asking they give half of it to Visa/MC.  Which is unfair.  A charity won't turn it down, but it's wasted.  So how do you solve this problem?  If you see a small merchant using Square or PayPal Here, their merchant agreements charge a flat rate (2.75% and 2.70% respectively) with no flat rate per transaction.  If you see they are on PayPal/Square, go for it.   Obviously PayPal itself doesn't have that problem, because they have a really, really good deal with Visa and Mastercard.  So feel free to buy yourself credit on your PayPal account with these residual values.   Amazon probably has a similar deal.   You are getting these small amounts because you aim to pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $25 on it.  Reasonable, but it causes this.   Flip it around: pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $20 on it, consume the $20 value, and pay the $2.69 in cash.  You may need to tell the cashier exactly the amount to charge (e.g. $20.00) especially if it is a Visa/MC card.  It will certainly go faster if you do.  The cashier may be able to pull up the balance, but it's an extra procedure, and an inexperienced cashier may struggle with it / have to call the manager etc. - not worth it in my book. Mathwise, I absolutely agree with the other answers.  No contest, you should keep getting the match.  But, just for completeness, I'll give a contrarian opinion that is generally not very popular, but does have some merit.   If you can focus on just one main financial goal at a time, and throw every extra dollar you have at that one focus (i.e., getting out of debt, in your case), you will make better progress than if you're trying to do too many things at once.  Also, there something incredibly freeing about being out of debt that has other beneficial impacts on your life. So, if you can bring a lot of focus to the credit card debt and get it paid off quickly, it may be worth deferring the 401(k) investing long enough to do that, even though it doesn't make as much mathematical sense.  (This is essentially what Dave Ramsey teaches, BTW.) "I am interested in seeing what happens to your report after you test this, but I don't think it's possible in practice, would not affect your credit score, and also wouldn't be worth it for you to carry a negative balance like that. Having a -1% credit utilization essentially means that you are lending the credit card company money, which isn't really something that the credit card companies ""do"". They would likely not accept an agreement where you are providing the credit to them. Having credit is a more formal agreement than just 'I paid you too much this month'. Even if your payment does post before the transaction and it says you have a negative balance and gets reported to the credit bureau like that, this would probably get flagged for human review, and a negative credit utilization doesn't really reflect what is happening. Credit utilization is 'how much do you owe / amount of credit available to you', and it's not really correct to say that you owe negative dollars. Carrying a negative balance like that is money that could be invested elsewhere. My guess is that the credit card company is not paying you the APR of your card on the amount they owe you (if they are please provide the name of your card!). They probably don't pay you anything for that negative balance and it's money that's better used elsewhere. Even if it does benefit your credit score you're losing out on any interest (each month!) you could have earned with that money to get maybe 1-2% better rate on your next home or car loan (when will that be?).  TLDR: I think credit utilization approaches a limit at 0% because it's based on the amount you owe and you don't really owe negative dollars. I am very interested in seeing the results of this experiment, please update us when you find out!" "In the end, all these fees hurt the average consumer, since the merchant ultimately passes cost to consumer. Savvy consumers can stay at par or get ahead, if they put in the effort. It's a pain, but I rotate between 4 cards depending on time of year and type of purchase, to optimize cash back. My cards are:  1. 5% rewards card on certain categories, rotates each quarter 2. 2% travel/dining card (fee card, but I travel a bunch so it's worth it, no foreign transaction fees) 3. 1.5% rewards card for everything else 4. Debit card (swiped as a CC) for small purchases (i.e. lunches) at credit union for ""enhanced"" high interest checking account, requiring certain # swipes/month. This alone returns to me ~$800/yr." I think the biggest reason is price; it's a lot cheaper now than it was to offer these.  That's because for the most part, when you get a credit score for free, you're not getting a true FICO score.  You're getting instead a VantageScore. VantageScore was created by the three credit bureaus, and as such they can offer it without paying Fair Isaac a licensing fee.  That makes it a lot cheaper to offer, and while it's not absolutely identical to FICO (or more accurately to any of the FICO provided scores) it's close enough for most peoples' purpose. And of course undoubtedly Fair Isaac has some price pressure on their side now that Vantage is big enough that many people see them as fungible.  As such they've had to make it easier, or they'd lose business - no longer being a monopolist. The other relevant piece here is that probably in many of these cases they're really just offering you what Experian would give you directly - so it's just a cross-marketing thing (where Experian, or perhaps another bureau, gets access to you as a customer so they can up-sell you ID theft insurance and whatnot, while the bank gets to offer the free score). FICO score tracks credit, not checking or savings. Unless there was a credit line attached, no impact at all.