Pay off one card entirely or spread payment across multiple cards?

[HeavenOhio]

The bottom line is that you're going to be paying this off in a couple of months anyway. As others have said, use your first round of payments to bring your balances down to 85% or so of the cards' limits. After that, pretty much anything will work. Scoring benefits will occur either because of lower balances or number of cards reporting balances. And with payments occuring in such a short window, APR is pretty much a non-factor.

Once this is all said and done, you'll want to have one card reporting a small balance. But that balance should come from new charges. You don't have to be paying interest to pull that off.

[LadyJEsq]

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@Anonymous wrote:

"General Good Financial Health" I suppose would be my answer.  I'm an actor so I work gig to gig and while things generally are going well, I'm trying to setup myself up for that next dryspell when and if it comes.

Goals, if any, in the short-term would be to finance/lease a fairly cheap used car.  

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Since you have no immediate goal of financing/apping, I would follow your plan A above. Pay off the one C1 card, and then pay off the others over the next two months. I know the board here likes to maximize scores at all times, but sometimes that simply isn't necessary. And in your case, it appears that it isn't. If you're positive that the debt will be paid off in the next two months, thereby allowing your scores to rebound in time to finance/lease your car, I don't see why one should twist themselves in knots trying to figure out paying down to the various percentages. Life is just too short IMO.