Best payment strategy for getting low interest offers and raising score?

[Anonymous]

(1) I have one big balance that is higher interest than the rest.  I want to pay down this card first and just pay minimum on my others.

Is this a good strategy?  

(2) I also thought that it might be a good idea to pay down some of my cards with lower rates and lower balances in the hopes that they would offer very low balance transfers that I could then use on my higher rate card. Are CC companies still offering these promos since the credit crisis started?  (They aren't to me, but my balances are close to limits.)

Is (2) a better strategy than (1)?

Finally, does the way you pay your cards off effect how your credit score increases? (ie, does your score increase more if you spread payments out among cards?)  Or is simply paying off debt all that matters for your score?

Thanks!

[marty56]

If your goal is to get of of debt (which it should be), the best plan is to use the debt snowball approach where you make minimum payments on all but the CC with the smallest balance.  On that one you pay extra until it is paid off and then attack the next smallest balance and so on.

This method is used by DMP companies and FCs like Dave Ramsey.

Moving debt around, especially these daysis nenver a good idea.

In terms of FICO scroing, util in each card is counted along with total util so reducing the amounts on high util cards might improve your FICO score but the goal is to get out of debt.  Once you do that the scores will take care of themselves.