Utilization is always a key to your reports for.scoring, and the lenders for their decisions. It shows how well you are managing your credit. When high, it also flags potential lenders that you are risky and may be struggling financially.
Usually, lowering your utilization gives you some of the quicker score imcreases.
Usually, lowering your utilization gives you some of the quicker score imcreases.
What I would recommend explicitly:
Post every card: Balance and Credit Limit; let the folks here take a shot at optimizing when we're talking one point.
Then tell us how much cash you have to work with; are you taking a cash out refinance anyway with the closing costs being rolled into the loan? Yeah 3K on aggregate when we're talking what, 60K in CL, isn't going to be much if any difference unless you cross a specific break point as TT correctly states.
Actually this comes down to financing trickery anyway, do you have enough cash flow and room on your DTI calc to get a personal loan even at a nasty interest rate to pay off a chunk of the CC debt, or do you have a vehicle you could do a cash out refinance on and get cash that way (which would be way cheaper), you're sort of stuck on options as your score would possibly be 100 points higher even on your mortgage scores if you weren't under such crushing revolving debt from what you describe if that one late is all that's negative on your report. Loading the debt on an installment line is much better FICO wise, though if the interest rate is ugly (read as higher than your CC APR's) you'll want to airstrike it post-haste after the refinance.
Or if you have relatives you have a good relationship with, consider a family loan, or a 401K loan if you have it, or a number of other venues which while not explicitly recommendeded in general, can get you enough breathing room on your credit scores to do something useful like refinancing that debt from likely 20% to 10% or thereabouts, or even cheaper depending what equity you have in the house if you are disciplined enough to leverage it without running up the cards again.
@Revelate wrote:What I would recommend explicitly:
Post every card: Balance and Credit Limit; let the folks here take a shot at optimizing when we're talking one point.
Then tell us how much cash you have to work with; are you taking a cash out refinance anyway with the closing costs being rolled into the loan? Yeah 3K on aggregate when we're talking what, 60K in CL, isn't going to be much if any difference unless you cross a specific break point as TT correctly states.
Actually this comes down to financing trickery anyway, do you have enough cash flow and room on your DTI calc to get a personal loan even at a nasty interest rate to pay off a chunk of the CC debt, or do you have a vehicle you could do a cash out refinance on and get cash that way (which would be way cheaper), you're sort of stuck on options as your score would possibly be 100 points higher even on your mortgage scores if you weren't under such crushing revolving debt from what you describe if that one late is all that's negative on your report. Loading the debt on an installment line is much better FICO wise, though if the interest rate is ugly (read as higher than your CC APR's) you'll want to airstrike it post-haste after the refinance.
Or if you have relatives you have a good relationship with, consider a family loan, or a 401K loan if you have it, or a number of other venues which while not explicitly recommendeded in general, can get you enough breathing room on your credit scores to do something useful like refinancing that debt from likely 20% to 10% or thereabouts, or even cheaper depending what equity you have in the house if you are disciplined enough to leverage it without running up the cards again.
Thanks...I will round up details and post.
Just to recap though....you think there is zero chance my score just hasn't fully updated? As I think I said previously...I had two different lenders give me action items dlfrom there simulation tool (funding suite) which said would give me 19 points. I've confirmed with a 3rs lender that funding suite is a reputable tool. Seems odd that it predicted 19 points and I only got 0 
I've used most of my resources following the action items already given to me. The only thing I have left at this point is time.
I really appreciate the replies. I wish FICO had a simulator for all of the score like they do for FICO 08
Simulators sorta suck, and they're not coded with the explicit breakpoints in the algorithm, it's handwaving at best. If all the lenders had updated correctly with the new balances by the time you got your 3B report, those are indeed your mortgage scores: revolving utilization is instant in time.
End of the day the best advice anywhere comes from here or a few other places on the net.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Revelate wrote:Simulators sorta suck, and they're not coded with the explicit breakpoints in the algorithm, it's handwaving at best. If all the lenders had updated correctly with the new balances by the time you got your 3B report, those are indeed your mortgage scores: revolving utilization is instant in time.
End of the day the best advice anywhere comes from here or a few other places on the net.
Side question...is there a rule of thumb on how much of an impact hard credit pulls have on your score? I'm not paying another $60 for my FICO mortgage score so in a week or so my lender will need to pull to see where I am.
How long ago was your last mortage pull by a lender? There are de-dupe windows (14 days on EX Risk Model v2, 30 or 45 days on EQ/TU mortgage ones) and a grace period (30 days)
Also you can just focus on one score out of the 3 and cut the $60 -> $20 with a 1B pull. I don't know anywhere you can get a mortgage score gratis in a short time period.
Complete list: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Mortgage-Loans/FICO-scores-used-for-mortgage-and-where-to-obtain-them/td-p/3817869
I wouldn't be playing with new inquiries personally when I was one point away from the hump unless I was in the de-dupe period typically; for example going from 2 -> 3 inquiries on EQ Beacon 5.0 (the EQ mortgage score) was a 7 point drop. YMMV as inquiry drops are linear, but without knowing where you're at, and explicitly knowing the bins (which we don't) I wouldn't risk that personally. $20 is trivial compared to a year long penalty which might take you out of the window altogether; however, your primary financial goal should be to get out from under that revolving debt and if you manage to make any sort of headway in that at all resulting in a score shift, you'll get 1 point and much more.
Really if I were you I'd go look at all my financial assets and seeing what I could do to pay off that 20% debt or thereabouts (typical for many credit cards), that's way higher than even the most risky of investments.