I hope this has an easy answer!

[itzateach]

I have 3 credit cards all maxed out right now but my home is up for sale. In the sale, I will be able to pay them all off leaving me with just the car/mortgage payment. Right now my scores are 638, 640, and 645. According to the simulator, if I pay those 3 cards off in 12 months I will be mid 700's, but I want to pay them all off at once. When I simulate that, I only go up about 40 points. How accurate is the simulator? I have no lates and my bankruptcy is 5 years old and scheduled to start dropping off in november through oct of 09. My oldest history is about 12 yrs. old.

Should I pay them off at once or space it out??

Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

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itzateach wrote:

I have 3 credit cards all maxed out right now but my home is up for sale. In the sale, I will be able to pay them all off leaving me with just the car/mortgage payment. Right now my scores are 638, 640, and 645. According to the simulator, if I pay those 3 cards off in 12 months I will be mid 700's, but I want to pay them all off at once. When I simulate that, I only go up about 40 points. How accurate is the simulator? I have no lates and my bankruptcy is 5 years old and scheduled to start dropping off in november through oct of 09. My oldest history is about 12 yrs. old.

Should I pay them off at once or space it out??

Thanks in advance.

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The simulator is fairly accurate.

I believe the difference in the two scenarios is because with the first scenario you are adding 12 months of on time payments to the mix. If the simulator takes into account that, plus your accounts aging another 12 months, plus maybe any lates turning older, inquiries dropping off/hurting less, etc....that would explain the differences.

As far as I know, the bump from util dropping would not be affected by paying off now or over 12 months time.

[itzateach]

When doing the simulator for all 3 it shows my score 720-760 if balances paid off over 24 months. I would sure like to see it jump up to that if paid off in full! Any chance of that?

[Anonymous]

You get an extra FICO hit for having maxed out (>90% UTL) on TL's  and the simulator does not see this-

Do your own Sim by using 13 points per 10 of overall utl being paid down-  and another 5 points for each MAXED account

another 15 points for accounts with balances-

Pay it all at once- then it's just aging points.

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itzateach wrote:

When doing the simulator for all 3 it shows my score 720-760 if balances paid off over 24 months. I would sure like to see it jump up to that if paid off in full! Any chance of that?

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[cobra19]

Pay them off ASAP.