Credit cards

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should I pay it off each month or not

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I would never carry a balance om a credit card outside of a true emergency.

You need to get between 10-30 % utilization.

my score has gone up massively, from my less responsible era, over the last 4-5 years by paying it in full and never missing a payment. -not- paying interest on a balance would greatly out weigh purposely carrying one for whatever, if any, boost to building your credit score, in my mind.

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Myth or not, you'll never come out ahead paying credit card interest rates for a higher score.
And if you do/can, you're financing way too much.

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fwiw, the suggestion is NOT to carry it past the due date (when you start accruing interest). The suggestion is to show low utilization when your STATEMENT is posted. Statement number is what gets reported.
So technically you could have 100% utilization ratio, and not pay any interest.

So OP, The date you should be paying attention to for credit building is your statement date. I would keep balance at 10% or below before this date. And of course as already mentioned, make sure to pay the remaining balance of the previous month's statement before the due date so you pay any interest.

E.g: 10k credit limit.
Statement date is July 1st
Due date is July 25th

On June 28th, your account shows you have spent 5k. You pay 4k, to take it down to 1k before July 1st. (allow a few days for posting). When your statement is posted it'll show you owe 1k. And that's the amount that will be reported to the credit agencies. So that's 10% utilization. Then make sure you pay the remaining 1k before the due date, that way you don't incur any interest. (don't worry about what's spent between those two dates, as that'll be applied on the next cycle).

OR just pay everything off once every month before the statement date (0% util). That way you don't have to do multiple payments. Some people say 0% isn't ideal but honestly in the long run, it won't matter that much.

What of you never reach 20%? Seriously I put everything I can on credit cards and don't think I've ever hit 10% utilization...maybe once with a large home reno purchase.
The credit score analysis tool provided by my bank says 0-10% for the best impact on your score.