What should I do? Help!

[Billikens]

Hey!

I am looking for some help on how to up my credit score.  My credit score is a low 665 with Transunion and 701 with Experian. 

My debt looks like the following:

Credit Card                                                      Balance                          Limit                 Interest Rate

1) American Express Premier Gold Card -     $0                                 ----                     0%

2) Fidelity 2% Amex Cash Back Card       -      $3,550                       $5,000               13.5%

3) US Bank Visa Card                                  -     $0                                $4,000               20%         - I would like to get rid of this card, but I am worried it will negatively effect me

4) BofA Mastercard Cash Back Card       -      $0                                $2,000               14.99%    - My first card opened; opened roughly 2.5 years ago

Also, I have a couple student loans totalling about $20,000.

How should I go about getting my credit score back up? Am I able to close my US Bank Visa Card without really hurting my credit score? I really want to get my score up above 750.  I am 23 years old. 

Thanks!

[guiness56]

The biggest thing you can do now is pay down that balance on the AMEX card.  It is running at 70% utilization and that is not good.  Getting it down to report at 9% or under would give you the biggest boost.

Utilization is done for overall and by each card.  Since this is the only card you use your overall is around 31% which is still kind of high.

I would not close any of the cards.  Just leave them at a 0 balance. 

[Shellemilyrose]

Guiness is absolutely right.

[MarineVietVet]

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@Billikens wrote:

Hey!

I am looking for some help on how to up my credit score.  My credit score is a low 665 with Transunion and 701 with Experian. 

My debt looks like the following:

Credit Card                                                      Balance                          Limit                 Interest Rate

1) American Express Premier Gold Card -     $0                                 ----                     0%

2) Fidelity 2% Amex Cash Back Card       -      $3,550                       $5,000               13.5%

3) US Bank Visa Card                                  -     $0                                $4,000               20%         - I would like to get rid of this card, but I am worried it will negatively effect me

4) BofA Mastercard Cash Back Card       -      $0                                $2,000               14.99%    - My first card opened; opened roughly 2.5 years ago

Also, I have a couple student loans totalling about $20,000.

How should I go about getting my credit score back up? Am I able to close my US Bank Visa Card without really hurting my credit score? I really want to get my score up above 750.  I am 23 years old. 

Thanks!

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Hi Billikens and welcome to myFICO.

First of all may I ask where you got your scores? Could you possibly mean an Equifax score of 701 instead of Experian? No one has been able to buy their own Experian FICO score since February of 2009. Creditors can pull Experian and also there is a CU (PSECU) in Pennsylvania that supplies that information to it's members only. You can only buy true FICO scores at a few places. One place is here at myFICO. I suggest you do an internet search for "myfico discount codes" to save a little money.

At one time you could also purchase your Transunion score at transunioncs.com but that site seems to have stopped doing that. Equifax will still sell you a FICO score but you have to look very hard to find it. You can get to it here: www.equifax.com/myfico-products.

I agree with the others that getting the utilization down on that Fidelity account as fast as possible will help you.

But FICO scores both overall and individual account utilization. Right now your overall utilization is 32% (3,550/11,000) and that in itself is prettty high. May I ask why you want to close the US Bank card? Does it have an AF (Annual Fee)? At this time I would probably leave it open because if you close the account you will lose it's $4,000 CL (Credit Limit) and that will increase your overall utilization to 51% (3,550/7,000).

Your score would almost surely suffer if you do that.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".