Paying Down Balances

[Anonymous]

I have a Fico score of 664.  I have $5000 worth of credit card debt.  If I pay all my debt off at once, what kind of score increase can I expect?

Thanks-

[sl]

Depends on what is on your CR. How many if any baddies do you have and what are the dates?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have a Fico score of 664. I have $5000 worth of credit card debt. If I pay all my debt off at once, what kind of score increase can I expect?

Thanks-

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It's not the total amount of cc debt you have that counts, it's the % utilization of available credit. If your total available credit is $5000 then you would see a LARGE increase. If your total available credit is $50000 then you won't see much, if any. The ideal utilizaition to max out your FICO score is between 1% and 9%.

[Anonymous]

(5) 30 day lates from 2-4 years ago to include:

2 mortage lates from early 05 late 04

1 credit card from late 04

2 student loan from early 05

(1) 60 day late student loan from late 2006

I did a forebarence on this account for a few months.  They said it would not effect my credit, but it did anyway.  I dont think I can fight it because I dont have written documentation.

Basically, I need to refinance my home loan in a year and want to make sure I'm okay. 

I have $6000 worth of CC debt ($7000 available credit) that I will pay off in September. 

Thanks,

Erik

[Anonymous]

Utilization is 30% of your FICO score. Since you are at almost 86%, paying your cc debt down to between $70 (1%) and $630 (9%)will have the greatest impact on your score by far. Once you have that taken care of you can work on your other baddies....

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the quick repsonse.  How can I work on my "baddies"? I was late with them-end of story right?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks for the quick repsonse. How can I work on my "baddies"? I was late with them-end of story right?

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GW letters to the OCs. Some of them may do it for you, some of them may not. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It's worth a $0.41 stamp to maybe get one or more removed. If the GW letters don't work, you can try pfb.

What you listed isn't that bad so even if they don't I wouldn't worry about it. It seems all the lates were from more than 2 years ago. The 1st 2 years after a late pay is where it hurts your score the most and that is past for you already.....

[Anonymous]

Paying down those balances is definitely the best short-term lever you have to pull for FICO score improvement. Keep the student loans and CCs paid on time from here on out, and you should see your FICO trend up.