New to MyFICO

[Anonymous]

Ok, so after reading through many posts, I was curious what my FICO scores and UTI were. So I got all three of my FICO scores and started doing some math.

First my scores:

TU-739, EQ-719, EX-720, zero late payments...ever. My only negatives are having too high of balances on my CC's/

My DTI is approx 46%, though it sure does feel tighter than that.

Not too bad, but I do know that's not so good.

UTI is 70% if I just count the active, with balance CC's.

UTI is 48% if I include those open with zero balance CC's, because these do count towards UTI, correct?

With my open cards my UTI looks like this:

Card         CL                BAL            % UTI         % Interest Rate

1          $12,000          $7000             58%                  8.25

2          $12,500          $8500             68%                  4.99

3          $  7,900          $7300             92%                  5.9

I was thinking that my best route was to pay down the higher bal cards first, but now I'm thinking that I'm actually better to pay down card 3 first.

I'm not really looking to make any major purchases any time soon, at least not until these cards get paid down. DH and I are selling our house so I know that will improve our DTI, what affect will that have on my score? I would think it would make it go up.

My other question is, once I get these paid down I wanted to drop the CL's back down to $5K or so, will that hurt my score? Or would it be only a short term drop based on that I would be paying off all my cards over the next 4-6 months?

This is an awesome site and was just looking for some advice as to whether or not I'm looking at this all the right way or not. Thanks!!

[phumanr]

If it were you, I would pay down card #1 with highest interest rate...because of compounding. What is hurting you is your overall utilization. You have great scores, but once you get all balances below 10%, your scores will jumpt. Selling the house may help some, but 35% of your fico scores is debt to credit limit ratios....the ccs are dropping your score because of the balance.

I WOULD not decrease your credit card limits...because of the 35% part of your fico score...just get the balances down and keep your overall utilization to 1-9%.

Phumanr

[Anonymous]

Do you use Microsoft Money or other financial software? Most have a debt reduction planner in them I am partial to MM and it was a great investment for 20 bucks.  Simply enter all your cards, the payment due dates, the percentage of min payments and let the software do the work for you.  Some would say pay the highest interest rate off first but if you have more on a lower interst rate card, that card could be costing you the most at the present time.  Financial software adjusts as you pay down and redistributes payments accordingly. You can usually add extra ayment info as well as what you can afford to pay each month and it will be distributed for the fastest payoff.

HTH

[haulingthescoreup]

Thanks, Brammy! You talk about Microsoft Money a lot, and I was wondering what exactly it does. Can it replace Quicken for easy tax figuring etc, or does it complement it?

My trusty Mac was fried when we had a lightning strike on our cable line--lightning balls inside the house, very exciting!--and I have sold out to Bill Gates with a Windows laptop, but I don't know a lot about MS financial software.

[Anonymous]

---

haulingthescoreup wrote:
Thanks, Brammy! You talk about Microsoft Money a lot, and I was wondering what exactly it does. Can it replace Quicken for easy tax figuring etc, or does it complement it?

My trusty Mac was fried when we had a lightning strike on our cable line--lightning balls inside the house, very exciting!--and I have sold out to Bill Gates with a Windows laptop, but I don't know a lot about MS financial software.

---

LOL! I only talk about Money cause I've been using it forever.  It allows me to project cash flow. Debt reduction, loan amoritization,  all sorts of fun stuff. I would never endorse one over the other, just don't know alot about Quicken.  I'm a girl and it's not pretty..j/k  Money is just what I'm used to.

Watch someone come aong and tell me about all the cool stuff Quicken has that Money lacks

[Anonymous]

I do use MM. I'll have to look for the feature that you're talking about. I guess in one sense I'm not so concerned about this in the short term because I am heading to a job in Sep/Oct that will pay off all my bills and then some within about six months. But I am so fascinated by this new thing I'm learning here.

Two of my credit cards I do not have minimum payments because I guess I'm paying them enough each month to keep them happy. I usually do the finance charge + $100 or $200 if I can afford it that month. Only card 2 requires a minimum monthly payment which usually is around $180, so again I pay the minimum + the finance charge up to an even number. I don't know I have this weird thing about making my balances even.

I guess that's one of the reasons that card 3 is the slowest being paid off, because it had the lowest balance. Of course that's now reversed roles with card 1 since I was able to make a very large payment to it.

I handle all the finances for DH and I and I'm often feeling overwhelmed by it all, but I know with this job in Iraq I can finally attain some financial security that I haven't had in some time.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

---

LPABF wrote:

I do use MM. I'll have to look for the feature that you're talking about. I guess in one sense I'm not so concerned about this in the short term because I am heading to a job in Sep/Oct that will pay off all my bills and then some within about six months. But I am so fascinated by this new thing I'm learning here.

Two of my credit cards I do not have minimum payments because I guess I'm paying them enough each month to keep them happy. I usually do the finance charge + $100 or $200 if I can afford it that month. Only card 2 requires a minimum monthly payment which usually is around $180, so again I pay the minimum + the finance charge up to an even number. I don't know I have this weird thing about making my balances even.

I guess that's one of the reasons that card 3 is the slowest being paid off, because it had the lowest balance. Of course that's now reversed roles with card 1 since I was able to make a very large payment to it.

I handle all the finances for DH and I and I'm often feeling overwhelmed by it all, but I know with this job in Iraq I can finally attain some financial security that I haven't had in some time.

Thanks.

---

Should find it on the left side of the screen.  Called a debt reduction plannner if you have the deluxe version.  When you start, simpley enter the min monthly payment for ALL cards, boost em by 20 bucks if you have to, but what we want to do here is to let the software do the work for you.  once you load all your accounts in your debt redution planner with the due dates, figure out how much you usually spend monthly on each card and enter that for each card.  On the next page enter what you generally pay in total or what you can afford to pay.  You may be surprised that Money allocates some of that 100.00 away from that card or more towards it.  I never pay mins either. But I have a loan and had been paying about 1200.00/mo on one of my cards simply because I was spending that much.  Found out I would save a lot more reallocating that to my loan though its only at 8.99%

Play with it and find out whats comfortable for you.  If you are trying not to exceed say 50% of any limit, enter the limit at 50% of what it actually is, that's what I do.  Anytime I am scheduled to go over what I set, Money rellocates my payment for that month including what I indicated would be my monthly spending on that card. It makes sure I have enough of whatever I allocated not only to keep it in check but to put my normal expenses on it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Brammy, I did find it and am now playing around with it to see what it thinks I should be paying.