Now in the garden and focusing on paying down CC debt. My short term goal is to hopefully get an auto CLI from Barclay on my Arrival+ at the 6 month mark, which will be September. Wondering what's the best way to pay my cards since most are reporting balances.
Overall util is at 25%. I'll be paying down some cards next week, bringing all cards under 10% except one that is my BT card. It's over 80%. After the large payment, total util will be 18%. In order to be in a good spot for a potential CLI, would it be best if I pay down all cards to 0 and only have the one card with super high util (I'll of course keep making more than min payments on it as I pay down other balances to zero but they won't be significant), or just make minimum payments and throw everything else at the card with the highest util since everything else will be under 9%? I understand an auto CLI isn't guaranteed and no one really knows how Barclay works, but one of my biggest downfalls on my report has been my high balances when I request CLIs or app for cards. Just wondering what looks best as I pay down balances or if it doesn't really matter and is personal preference.
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For the sake of simplicity I would pay the majority to $0 & keep one high balance.
Entered Garden 6/3/2014, Staying until Jun 2016. Score 797 via DiscoverSimplicity is good, thanks. I see that's been successful for you. How many cards do you actively use and PIF and how many are SD?
@takeshi74 wrote:
@Stanic413 wrote:Overall util is at 25%. I'll be paying down some cards next week, bringing all cards under 10% except one that is my BT card. It's over 80%.
Be careful with leaving it at 80% for too long. Prolonged high utilization can lead to AA. What's the exact reported utilization? How close is it to being maxed? Individiual utilization does matter.
@Stanic413 wrote:but one of my biggest downfalls on my report has been my high balances when I request CLIs or app for cards.
You have your answer right there. If they tell you X is an issue then address X.
I've had high utlization on cards for a while and just recently did the BT to a 0% APR card so I can actually pay it down. I was paying so much in interest I couldn't make a dent in my CC debt. As I said, the one card is at about 83% util so according to fico, it's maxed.
As far as "issue X" goes, I got those responses before I did the BT. I understand the issue is debt and I'm addressing paying it down/off. Just wondering where to pay first to increase chances to get CLIs. Before the BT, the balances were split between 4 cards and they were all pretty high utilization. Now it's just one card at 80%, two cards are around 8%, the others are under 3%. I just didn't know if how much I could pay on my 80% card would make a big enough dent between now and September to make a significant difference. It'll likely still be at least 65%. If 65% with all other cards reporting a balance under 10% looks better, I'll throw most money at the high balance card. But if $0 balances on all except one at 73% util looks better, then I want to pay the other cards down to reporting $0 first. Hope that makes sense. I feel like more reporting 0 shows I'm not running up balances on all cards.
