Raising Fico Score

Anonymous · ‎08-07-2007

Hi,

I have an overall balance of about $10500 on my credit cards. One limit is $15K, balance at $6000 and the other limit is $9000, balance at $4500. Score is 660, 659, 645. If I pay off the $4500 limit, it will leave me with just the $6000 balance with the $15K limit ( APR is 7%, so the principal is paid down substantially every month). The $4500 balance carries a 29.99% rate. The question is if I pay off the $4500 card (both cards are closed by the way), is my score gonna shoot up substantially to 700+ or just about 680-690? The scores right now is creeping up at about 4-5 points a month. Very slow. I just paid down the cards by $12000 this past month (paid one off) but the scores shot up by only 47 points. I need the scores to hit 700 in order to get a great rate on a Mortgage. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

SK

Anonymous · ‎08-07-2007

You gotta get your utilization down too less than 10% to start...

why did you close the cards?

Anonymous · ‎08-07-2007

Good morning,

I am still getting a hang of the credit game but reading your post the first thing that grabbed my attention was the credit card with a rate of 29.99% and a balance of $4.5K. I personnally would pay this one off ASAP, i wouldnt extend it over a few months to show a payment history. If you have the cash available, i dont see a better place for it then paying this monster off.

With an absense of $4.5K on your credit, your scores should improve, i dont think you will break the 700 but you should see it improve some.

Give this post a few hours and people with more knowledge then me should help you out.

SpecFile · ‎08-07-2007

With the accounts closed does it even matter? I thought that to benefit from credit cards the util. needed to be 1-9%. How can a closed account be beneficial?

Enlighten me as I am new to the credit card game.

Anonymous · ‎08-07-2007

SpecFile wrote:
With the accounts closed does it even matter? I thought that to benefit from credit cards the util. needed to be 1-9%. How can a closed account be beneficial?

Enlighten me as I am new to the credit card game.

not benificial if you still owe balances and your debt is still high to the original TL'S you had

then paying them down will improve your scores....
I had 9 cards CO with a balance of roughly 10000 and alot of that was from several years

of interest so my utilization was around 180%....

SpecFile · ‎08-07-2007

Ouch TM!

Anonymous · ‎08-07-2007

SpecFile wrote:
Ouch TM!

Got EXP and EQ showing 0 debt now and just waiting for

TU to follow suit........

fused · ‎08-07-2007

SpecFile wrote:

With the accounts closed does it even matter? I thought that to benefit from credit cards the util. needed to be 1-9%. How can a closed account be beneficial?

Enlighten me as I am new to the credit card game.

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=generalcredit&thread.id=32639

SpecFile · ‎08-07-2007

Thanks Fused.

Anonymous · ‎08-08-2007

Hi and thanks folks. Actually started a business 3 years ago and used up the cash for business but living on credit card at the time. Of course all the cards were low in APR% at the time. The Chase was at 0% for a year then 9% but if you missed a payment, it would be up to 23% to 29% if you missed more then once. I was behind for 90 days, so they (Credit card companies) closed all of my account. I made arrangements to pay them but have been suffering the high interest rate for the last 2 1/2 years. Question is I can pay the Chase at $4500 off but the lates from 2 years ago are still affecting my score. Is there a way to clean up the lates because I have not been late for the last 2 years. By the way, scores before I lost the business was 690,685, 710 respectively. It seems that the credit company waits to capitalized on you when your down. At least it seems that way. Anybody have any luck sending the dispute letter and they don't respond so they have to delete the actual lates? Thanks in advance.