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Hi Everyone
Have worked hard this week, next week expecting a fairly large paycheck, I have several accounts with smaller balances, and 3 accounts with larger balances that equal about 6500. Next week I can pay off about 3000 of this. Should I pay off all of my smaller balances giving me more accounts that are paid with 0 balance on my reports, Or pay off a couple of my larger balance cards, and then chip away at the smaller ones. I know utilization overall will decrease about 45%. I am at about 40% utilization of 15,600 available credit now. So after payment I will be at about 22% total, but I know each card is also scored according to its utilization. So for credit score sake, which should give me a bigger score increase? I know that I probably won't get a huge score increase until I am down to less that 9%. I will continue to work on that.
Thanks for any advice, it is much appreciated!
Just my personal opinion but I'd use the snowball effect. Pay off the smaller ones, take the money you'd pay on those and roll it into the next smaller one, then so on. You see results doing it this way and it gives you motivation.
couple questions to consider.
1- are you carrying a balance on all the cards for more than 1 month? or are all these charges from this past month? I'm assuming its the first.
2- is your main goal here paying off the credit cards and getting them down to a reasonable level or just to see a boost on your score now? (ie your getting ready to app for something)
If you give detialed info we can give you a better suggestion - cc balance/credit limit/interest rates pluse think about those questions.
Snowball method is great - but at one point or another you need to ignore the 'motivation' factor and pay off those larger ones that have higher interest rates otherwise it will end up costing you much more in the end and thus making the progress go smaller.
But then again it might be just the right tool.
Post that info and we'll see what we come up with.