What's better, paying a card to 0 or cutting down other higher balances?

[HeavenOhio]

There are three things that factor into scoring:

• Overall utilization
• Individual card utilization
• Number/percentage of cards with non-zero balances

The good news is every plan of attack will address overall utilization. Individual card utilization is determined by the card that has the highest utilization. Number/percentage of cards with non-zero balances is ideally under half of your cards. Some say under a third is better, and some profiles get dinged when more than one has a non-zero balance.

@Sixburgh79, definitely toss at least $200 toward your Merrick card. 88.9% is considered maxed, and it's a big deal on one's score. If you can bring it down a few percentage points below 88.9%, you'll prevent the next month's interest charge from maxing out the card again.

Not knowing how much "a few dollars" is, my suggestion after Merrick would be to start paying off every small balance you can. When you do that, make sure to check the following month's statement for a trailing interest charge. That'll be a tiny amount that you should be able to pay immediately. Don't use the cards that you've paid to zero until you see that you have statement balances of zero. When that happens, interest charges will have stopped, and the grace periods on those cards will have been restored.

If you have enough cash, an option would be to bring all of your balances to an amount safely below 48.9%, maybe about 44%. After paying that, you can attack small balances with any money that's leftover.

@Np1791, I don't see any obvious thresholds that you can cross with $950. Given that, I think you can do one of two things:

• Pay off Citi Costco, getting one card out of your hair and reducing your non-zero balances by one card.
• Throw about $770 on your Discover Card, bringing it safely below 68.9%. At that point, all of your cards would be below that threshold. The only issue is that we can't tell for sure which thresholds apply to your profile.

Leftover money can go toward paying something above the minimum on your other cards. As I mentioned above, if you pay off a card completely, make sure to take care of trailing interest on the following month's statement and not use the card until you see a statement balance of zero.

[Sixburgh79]

Heaven, thanks for that helpful info... Much appreciated.. Yea I have 500 atm to put on them. So would you recommend maybe putting 5 on merrick?

[HeavenOhio]

$450 on Merrick would bring it down to 64%, which would keep you below the 68.9% threshold. If you go that route, you'd want to follow up by putting $300 on your $1700 Capital one balance. If 68.9% is a threshold that applies to you, all cards would have to be below that number for a scoring benefit to kick in. 

[Sixburgh79]

Heaven, I think that sounds like a plan. Since I got you here... One other question, would it be something to consider to move some of these to my chase freedom unlimited? I'm still early in my balance transfer period. It has a 3k limit atm, how could I benefit perhaps by moving some of these around?

[HeavenOhio]

Yeah, you could transfer balances. If you do that, make sure that the balance transfer fees are less than any interest you might end up paying. I'd aim to keep the utilization on the Chase card at 48.9% or below. Because it's at 0%, you don't need a cushion to keep it below that threshold.

Once you transfer balances, make sure you pay "substantially" over the minimum each month to Chase. That shouldn't be a big issue as the minimum on the kind of balance you'd be carrying won't be that high. And I'd work on a full frontal attack on any balances you might have left.

Once balances are paid off and grace periods are reset, your goal should be to pay in full each month and avoid interest.

[Np1791]

---

@HeavenOhiowrote:

There are three things that factor into scoring:

• Overall utilization
• Individual card utilization
• Number/percentage of cards with non-zero balances

The good news is every plan of attack will address overall utilization. Individual card utilization is determined by the card that has the highest utilization. Number/percentage of cards with non-zero balances is ideally under half of your cards. Some say under a third is better, and some profiles get dinged when more than one has a non-zero balance.

@Sixburgh79, definitely toss at least $200 toward your Merrick card. 88.9% is considered maxed, and it's a big deal on one's score. If you can bring it down a few percentage points below 88.9%, you'll prevent the next month's interest charge from maxing out the card again.

Not knowing how much "a few dollars" is, my suggestion after Merrick would be to start paying off every small balance you can. When you do that, make sure to check the following month's statement for a trailing interest charge. That'll be a tiny amount that you should be able to pay immediately. Don't use the cards that you've paid to zero until you see that you have statement balances of zero. When that happens, interest charges will have stopped, and the grace periods on those cards will have been restored.

If you have enough cash, an option would be to bring all of your balances to an amount safely below 48.9%, maybe about 44%. After paying that, you can attack small balances with any money that's leftover.

@Np1791, I don't see any obvious thresholds that you can cross with $950. Given that, I think you can do one of two things:

• Pay off Citi Costco, getting one card out of your hair and reducing your non-zero balances by one card.
• Throw about $770 on your Discover Card, bringing it safely below 68.9%. At that point, all of your cards would be below that threshold. The only issue is that we can't tell for sure which thresholds apply to your profile.

Leftover money can go toward paying something above the minimum on your other cards. As I mentioned above, if you pay off a card completely, make sure to take care of trailing interest on the following month's statement and not use the card until you see a statement balance of zero.

---

Thank you HeavenOhio! Currently discover is at 4.99apr and Citi is at 16.54 i believe. Should i still throw most of it at Discover? I was thinking of doing this

Amex 3,500/11,000

Citi  0/8,500           or    citi 700/8,500

Discover IT  5,100/7,000        or   4,400/7,000

[HeavenOhio]

@Np1791, I'd throw the money at Citi and take advantage of the much lower interest on the Discover card.