Needing to increase my score... Please help!!

[Anonymous]

Hello all...

I am new to the message boards and wanted to get some advice.  I am in the process of cleaning up my CR and I needed to know what would have the most impact in increasing my scores.  I have about 3,000 dollars in collections as well as I have used about 3,000 dollars on my credit card.  Should I pay the collections or the credit card balances off first.  Unfortunately I can't pay them both right now?  Which would have the most impact in improving my score.  Currentlymy FICO is 560 EX.

[rbrown973]

How old are the collections, are they all accurate???

[llecs]

Utilization.

Yes, pmt history is 35%, while 30% of your FICO score is amounts owed. But the CA is a smaller part of the 35%. You still have your history of your CCs, installment accts if any, etc. Whereas if you paid down all CCs, you'll see a huge bump.

To throw in a monkey wrench, if you have $3k in CC balances but have $100k in CC CLs, then you likely won't see a bump. It would all depend on your total CL amount. If you only had $3k in total CLs, then $3k in paydowns will result in a large 50-70 point jump (if I were a betting man).

[preci0uz]

In my opinion,

I would pay all the credit cards down to ZERO.

After balance is ZERO call the creditors and ask for a CLI.

Find out when the creditors report the account to the CRA.

After it shows on your credit report with ZERO balance and hopefully you got the CLI- pay Then pay some of the collections (actually the earliest that have posted on your report).

You should see some point+ if not there must be something wrong with those CRA! lol

Message Edited by preci0uz on 04-06-2008 05:39 AM

[Anonymous]

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givesa wrote:

Hello all...

I am new to the message boards and wanted to get some advice.  I am in the process of cleaning up my CR and I needed to know what would have the most impact in increasing my scores.  I have about 3,000 dollars in collections as well as I have used about 3,000 dollars on my credit card.  Should I pay the collections or the credit card balances off first.  Unfortunately I can't pay them both right now?  Which would have the most impact in improving my score.  Currentlymy FICO is 560 EX.

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Paying your collections will likely not help your credit score at all. That is not saying you shouldn't pay. But if you can give some dates associated with your collections, maybe we can offer some advice on how to deal with them and get them removed. Even though paid collections don't help your score, during a manual review, paid looks better than unpaid.

If your CC are open, I'd worry about getting your balances paid down. This will affect your score more.