@Anonymous wrote:OK calling all you FICO experts. Tomorrow I begin the big process of paying down my bills. I want to get this right. From the past few days of reading on this site I understand that I should pay off my finance company loan, clothing stores etc and pay my major credit cards from 9000, 6000, and 4500 and leave about 100 dollars on each of them for the credit reporting phase and then pay them off after the score kicks up. I am paying off my two Capitol Ones because Capitol One has dinged me on the report for nearly seven years. I only owe them a little but they are a pain in my side..
WGP, one of the biggest killers, besides being late, is utilization. A part of utilization is number of accounts with balances. You don't want to have too many accounts with balances. My advice would be to add up the number of open accounts you have, divide by 2 and subtract one or 1/2 of one if total # is odd. That's the most that I would allow to report a balance for maximum scoring opportunties.
I am officially reassuring you that you are doing the right thing by paying down the debt for FICO scoring purposes.
Starting Score: 469