I have 50k in personal credit. I am also an AU on 50k in one Amex card.
I had 18k in revolving debt reporting and 6.8k on the AU balance... been at about 25% UTIL for 6-9 months with the scores of 620/638/672 of late.
Just paid off all 18k in revolving debt which will take me to 6.8% for the one AU. Essentially zero balances on all my cards except a reporting balance of about $100 on my main credit card.
Wondering so much how much of an effect having all these cards paid off will have. Some of the cards were 50-80% UTIL and now they are all ZERO! woo! I'm presuming the one negative will be that when each statement cuts with zero balance, I will have little interest amounts posted to each account I paid off... so I will have a bunch of accounts with $0-50 balances... LOL
Negatives bringing my scores down are old tax liens from 2008-2012 and ONE baddie thats too big to pay off from 2012.....
It will depend on your overall profile. You should definitely get a jump in score, but it is hard to determine the amount. With each person, it can be different by a wide range.
@dallasareaguy wrote:I have 50k in personal credit. I am also an AU on 50k in one Amex card.
I had 18k in revolving debt reporting and 6.8k on the AU balance... been at about 25% UTIL for 6-9 months with the scores of 620/638/672 of late.
Just paid off all 18k in revolving debt which will take me to 6.8% for the one AU. Essentially zero balances on all my cards except a reporting balance of about $100 on my main credit card.
You will get a big bump
Wondering so much how much of an effect having all these cards paid off will have. Some of the cards were 50-80% UTIL and now they are all ZERO! woo! I'm presuming the one negative will be that when each statement cuts with zero balance, I will have little interest amounts posted to each account I paid off... so I will have a bunch of accounts with $0-50 balances... LOL
You can avoid that by 'pushing' some small payments to the accounts before statement cut (i.e. just send them from your checking acct billpay rather than pay on the credit card site). But be sure to keep that $100 account reporting
Negatives bringing my scores down are old tax liens from 2008-2012 and ONE baddie thats too big to pay off from 2012.....
@Friarchuck wrote:
You are right about the "trailing interest" posting to your account. This can be an extremely dangerous trap for folks who just want to forget about large balances they have been paying down for a while. The temptation is to pay it to 0 and then forget about it, but what will happen is that you will owe $20-50 due to the way that almost all lenders calculate interest, the 30-day average balance method. Don't pay off your balance and forget it! Check every day to find that trailing interest and get rid of it!
Yeah, This 18k was over about 15 accounts including 12 of them store cards. I'm sure about 30 days from now I will have all these accounts with $5-50 balances depending on previous balances. I hope I still see huge positives with the tiny balances, but I am guessing that I'm looking at 60 days to get cleared up the way I want it to appear. Ohh well, 6-7% will still look way better than 25% and a lot of 50-80% accounts are paid off now... that might help too.
Thanks all for your comments!
I paid off my balances except one (535 balance). I have 4% UTIL and my score didn't move at all. It didn't go up a point. I was disappointed. Maybe yours can jump up. Mine didn't.
