"Max Out Credit Cards to Build Credit Score"

Max out credit cards to build credit score—this catastrophically wrong advice confuses utilization with building. Maxing out cards tanks your score by an average of 100 points and leaves you drowning in high-interest debt that compounds at 22% APR, a rate 30% higher than the typical personal loan. A comparison with #5 shows this strategy is slower: the credit hit takes 18 months to recover from, whereas day trading losses are immediate.