If I understand, this happened because my balance on one card went up from about $8K to about $20K. I want to apply for a new mortgage (about $500K) on the house I currently share with my partner, but have no equity in yet. He has a loan of $625K at 7.25%, and in fairness, I am paying the interest on it for now..... which obviously makes no sense. Here's the bigger picture: I opened one new card, and reopened an Amex card I had shut down (before I knew closing cards was a bad thing). I have a total of three cards now. A visa with $25K on it(@9.99%), and Amex where I just paid off and $8K balance, and a new business card with maybe $2K on it. I also have a mtg. of $330K (@6.25%) on a (now) second home, and a HELOC on that same property for $300K (at 6.99% right now) which has an $88K balance on it. LTV is about 37.5% I have about $11K in checking, about $20K in receivables, $354K in a CD at 4.65% maturing in late March, and a $70K tax bill I intend to pay with some of that CD. How do I best use my cash and available credit raise my FICO score?? I was so close to crossing the 700 threshold, and now this huge setback..... My thought was this: I use all the cash to pay down the CC balance, and use the HELOC to pay down the rest of that balance now and use the receivables (whenever they come in... 30 to 60 days presumably) to pay down the HELOC later. If the HELOC balance goes up, does it have the same negative impact on my FICO score as the CC balance going up? Should I use cash from the CD (earning terrible interest), to reduce or eliminate all debt? How quickly might that affect my FICO score? Should I use any of the CD money as a downpayment on the loan? Maybe get a non-jumbo instead of jumbo loan?
