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Hello, I have very high UTL and is the only thing majorly impacting my fico score. I am trying for a quick boost
in Score only but only have $1000 to spend. Please inform me what will make the most impact to my score thanks.
Here are my accounts now:
Kay- 1,386 on 4,000CL
THD 974 on 1000CL
Zales 633 on 633CL
Macy 565 on 600CL
Toys R us 485 on 500CL
Orchard 308 on 320CL
Best Buy 295 on 320CL
My plan is to pay off Orchard and Best buy completely and 100 on 4 cards not including the kay card because it is well under UTL compared to the others. I am thinking paying off the 2 small ones will show less accounts reporting a balance and spreading 100 each on the others would help UTL.
But what do you feel is my best option to pay for a quick boost?
Thanks
My understanding is that any card over 80% utilization is considered maxed-out. You should work to get as many as possible under 80% as possible. If you have no other CC, then all your cards have a balance. You are getting penalized for that with FICO.
It looks like you have a bunch of cards with notoriously high interest rates. Perhaps you should pay the highest interest rates down first and stop new charges.
Definitely pay down from the limits!
Hi bott6698!
With a little more information I think you might get more input as to the best way to attack your debt and meet your goals. You mentioned that you're going for a "quick score boost", but given the information that you've provided, I'm not sure that you're going to see a score boost until you can gain some significant traction with debt pay down-- getting your UTI down much further than what you'll immediately be able to do with $1k.
The $1k will definitely help. BUT, the problem is that being maxed out on all but one card (are these all of your cards?), as others have already mentioned, is absolutely killing you. Additionally, having all of your cards reporting a balance is hurting you. You need to get your overall UTI down, the UTI for any individual card down, and less than half of your cards reporting a balance. Unless you've got some more money to throw at your debt, I don't think that $1k is going to result in an appreciable increase right away.
So, the first question is this-- what do you need a "quick score boost" for? If it's to obtain more credit I'd caution you to wait (if at all possible), and attack your debt using a modified snowball approach where you use the $1k to pay off as many cards as you can (two is going to be the max you can PIF), and then, depending on what your goals are, to start either attacking the lowest balances, or the highest APRs, or (my favorite approach) a combination of both.
Are you paying above the minimum balances on this debt as of today? If so, once you distribute the $1k that you have you'll need to utilize the funds that would have made the monthly payments on the PIF'd cards to pay down another card. As of right now, here's where you're at utilization-wise. I'd suggest paying off BestBuy & Orchard, and then splitting the remaining amount between your two highest APR cards (but not Kay). Again, I don't think you're going to see much in the way of a score boost until much more of the debt has been paid off, but I think this will put you on the road to that score boost, and will save you some money in interest.
CL | Bal | %UTI | |
Kay | 4000 | 1386 | 34.65% |
THD | 1000 | 974 | 97.40% |
Zales | 633 | 633 | 100.00% |
Macy | 600 | 565 | 94.17% |
TRU | 500 | 485 | 97.00% |
Orchard | 320 | 308 | 96.25% |
BB | 320 | 295 | 92.19% |
Totals | 7373 | 4646 | 63.01% |
Lil Mirth, It is because I am working on selling my house and buying a new one. 4kids are not working so well anymore in a 3 bedroom 1200 sq foot home. I am at 591TU and 568EQ and not sure on EX but need atleast a mid score of 620 to get financed on a new home and would like to be up at more of a 650 range. I got thrown into a clean bucket recently when my only Collection dropped off it seems from another post I had which makes this UTL really crush my score bringing me down 80 points! These are all my CREDIT CARDS but I also have a maxed out LOC for 20K that was for an addition on my home and my overall UTL is at 89% right now. So I am trying to find ways to increase to where I need to be over the next few months. If I pay off orchard and best buy I will show less cards reporting a balance... The LOC is already $450 per month and my goal is once I have my cards paid down to go after the LOC and hopefully also make some profit on my home to go towards the LOC as well.