How to spread out utilization

[Anonymous]

So I know the criteria in a perfect world, zero balance on all my accounts and very small <10% on one card. Moving into a new house though after closing tomorrow and will be charging furniture, some old medical bills for my son's surgery (so we don't have to mess with paying monthly and waiting for a slip up to report to our credit) and a few other incidentals.

All in all will be about 30-35K which I plan on paying off over the course of the next 9 months.

Curently have 2% util, approx 120K in available credit and my fico 8 scores range from 763-785 with no baddies.

So the question is... do I slap that 30-35k on say two of my cards that have larger limits and leave the rest at 0? Or do I distribute 3-5k across multiple cards? 

And FYI, I have 0% intro APR on at least 4 of the cards with larger limits which would still be applicable 9 months from now when I pay off. The rewards structure on the cards that I might use is such that it doesn't make a whole lot of difference which ones get charged as I've already received the introductory bonus on all of them and the remaining points structure is very similar.

[Anonymous]

I would only put bits and pieces on multiple cards if I knew I could pay off those chunks before incurring interest...

Makes no sense to carry balances (even small ones) on cards with higher interest rates if I can easily put a larger balance on a card with 0 or at least lower interest rates and know that I will pay that off before incurring much, if any, interest.

You've just purchased a house (congrats, btw) and so unless you are needing your credit to incur another large debt in the next 9 months, it won't matter anyway... your FICO will rebound just as soon as you pay off the last of this new set of charges, after all.  10 months from now, if you get it all paid off as planned in 9 months, your score will not look any different than it does now pre-charging.

I think you need to focus on getting out of your shopping/bill-paying spree with as little interest cost as possible.  Never mind the (completely temporary) loss of FICO points for having high usage on a couple of cards - especially if those couple of cards can help you get all of this done with no interest in the end.

[Anonymous]

If you just bought a house and your scores are in the 780s......and you know for a FACT you can pay down the 30k in 9 months..... I would do this over a 6 month period, and get some new cards to help knock down the cost and get you some rewards!!!  As long as you have emergency fund saved up, etc etc.

Bottom line, most people shouldn't do this. They should not pay off all the bills on credit cards. They should just set up payment arrangements with each place and let that be that.

If you are very responsible then you could do quite a bit here with this and turn it in to something better.  Would seem a little more rewarding.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the feedback y'all. I was actually considering apping for a couple additional cards tomorrow after I close to see what I might be able to do to get some more rewards out of my spending spree and decrease my utilization post spree.

Was considering either penfed and discover or penfed and bofa as they seem to be pretty generous with limits. My income is at 231k annually so I'm hoping that combined with my score will negate the number of new accounts I've had in the last twelve months (5 new accounts)