Credit Cards

[Romeoo47]

I have $6000 to use to pay on my final two credit cards before I'm credit card debt free.  Here are the two with credit balances and limit:

Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards -AMEX ($6636/$17000) -- 11.24% APR

HSBC Weekend Card - ($1310/$1750) - 0% APR until Nov 2009

So my question is should I use the entire $6000 and pay on the Citi card or should I pay off the HSBC and use the rest for Citi?  I have other credit cards with zero balances that total about about $23,000 in available credit.  My current UTIL is about 21%.  Which option do you think will help my credit score more?  Lastly, I won't be able to pay the remaining balances off until June.  However, I looking to buy a car and I'm in the low 700s right now on 2 of my 3 FICOs.  I'm not sure about Experian.

Please help family, I want a 740 or better by the time I go car shopping.  Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[Locksley123]

Looks like this one is no brainer.

Leave about $150 on your HSBC card, to have under  10% utilization and apply the rest to Citi. Now, the problem is that you will end up with utilization of about 10.5% on your Citi card. Can you find another $200 to apply to Citi?

Alternatively you can call Citi credit analyst and ask for CLI without hard pull. Explain that you will be paying most of the card off, but want to have low utilization, meaning that you would need about $3000 CLI. 

[Locksley123]

Good luck!

[Creditaddict]

well since you have 0% I would pay all on citi

[billsfan14]

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Creditaddict wrote:
well since you have 0% I would pay all on citi

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I'd say the same thing.  For scoring sakes, overall UTL plays a more important role than individual UTL.  Take advantage of the interest free money for now, put don't wait until it's too late to pay that off! 

[Romeoo47]

Thanks everyone for your advice.  I think I'm going to apply all of it to Citi and pay the other card in June.  Hopefully I will get a nice boost when it hits my credit reports.  Thanks again!

[Locksley123]

Romeo,

I would usually tell you to payoff Citi first. However, since you are trying to get the boost in credit score, you want to work on your utilizations. Overall utilization will be the same regarless if you pay Citi or HSBC. But your HSBC utilization is very high, so you want to bring it down. It helps that your Citi card has a high limit, so you can leave 1700 on it and it's only corresponds to 10% utilization.

[Romeoo47]

Thanks maks1806!  I really want the credit boost so I can get the very best rate on my auto loan.  So I will pay Citi down to $1700 and HSBC down to 9-10%.

[Creditaddict]

oh sorry, if score is more important than money savings, I would pay HSBC OFF and the rest on Citi. The fewer cards you have reporting a balance will give you the biggest boost if I'm not mistaken.

[Uborrow-Upay]

Pay $800 to HSBC, pay $5200 to Citi.

Best of both worlds.  Less interest to Citi, acceptable utilization for HSBC on an individual card.

Happy car shopping!