How discouraging ...
My husband has a total of two open cards reporting and we paid one off entirely this past month. (It was at almost 100% usage beginning of January so this is a big change!).
It hit the report today and.. no change in the fico score.
I wasn't expecting a huge bump but this is disappointing. I was hoping to see at least a slight change.
He has been stuck at 673 for almost 9 months now!
The other card we have is still reporting a rather large balance.
However, I have just sent $5k to it, bringing the balance down to just over 60% util.
It should report in about 3 weeks.
If THAT doesn't do something to the score, I'm really going to be confused. 
-C-
@jnc wrote:How discouraging ...
My husband has a total of two open cards reporting and we paid one off entirely this past month. (It was at almost 100% usage beginning of January so this is a big change!).
It hit the report today and.. no change in the fico score.
I wasn't expecting a huge bump but this is disappointing. I was hoping to see at least a slight change.
He has been stuck at 673 for almost 9 months now!
The other card we have is still reporting a rather large balance.
However, I have just sent $5k to it, bringing the balance down to just over 60% util.
It should report in about 3 weeks.
If THAT doesn't do something to the score, I'm really going to be confused.
-C-
Can you give more specific numbers, so folks here know what you're dealing with? What amount of debt vs credit limit on the card (can make a difference). For example, paying off $500 on a $500 limit (the 100% you mentioned), may not get you what you want, compared to paying off $5k of $5K.
You have another card that, even after you paid $5K, you'll still have 60% util? What is it now before the payment hits? That could be a killer right there.
The paid off card was about $1100.
The other card was at about 13,800 of a 14,300 limit before I sent 5k payment.
Like I said, I wasn't expecting a 30 point jump or anything. I just figured I might see a couple points for zeroing that card.
I really hope the paydown on the second card makes a difference. Not that I'm in a hurry, as we plan to spend the rest of this year paying it down a good deal more. It just helps with motivation, to see the score change
The other card was at about 13,800 of a 14,300 limit before I sent 5k payment.
Like I said, I wasn't expecting a 30 point jump or anything. I just figured I might see a couple points for zeroing that card.
I really hope the paydown on the second card makes a difference. Not that I'm in a hurry, as we plan to spend the rest of this year paying it down a good deal more. It just helps with motivation, to see the score change
@jnc wrote:
The paid off card was about $1100.
The other card was at about 13,800 of a 14,300 limit before I sent 5k payment.
Like I said, I wasn't expecting a 30 point jump or anything. I just figured I might see a couple points for zeroing that card.
I really hope the paydown on the second card makes a difference. Not that I'm in a hurry, as we plan to spend the rest of this year paying it down a good deal more. It just helps with motivation, to see the score change
Sometimes it can take more than one cycle to see the full benefit of paying down/off cards. I know that's happened to me; could be what you're experiencing here. Give it another cycle and then also with that $5k paydown from that $14.3K limit, you might see those points go up for paying down both.
What are you using as your source to determine your credit scores? If you're using a CMS, they can sometimes be slow in updating credit scores.
We have scorewatch on this site, so the score is from here.
Thanks for the insight. I guess I will just try to be patient and eventually things will get moving
For us, we've often had it take up to two cycles to see a score change. Hard to be patient, I know. They always seem to update it around the time I stop thinking about it.
Well now I've gone ahead and disputed a charged-off au account, hoping they'll drop it from his report.
Hopefully all of this put together will get the number moving!
In the meanwhile... I'll try to stop thinking about it ... as if that will happen 
@jnc wrote:
The paid off card was about $1100.
The other card was at about 13,800 of a 14,300 limit before I sent 5k payment.
Like I said, I wasn't expecting a 30 point jump or anything. I just figured I might see a couple points for zeroing that card.
I really hope the paydown on the second card makes a difference. Not that I'm in a hurry, as we plan to spend the rest of this year paying it down a good deal more. It just helps with motivation, to see the score change
You still have very high overall utilization, until the $5K is reflected on your reports.
Scoring takes into account the overall utilization, utilization per card, and proportion of cards with balances. It also looks at whether a card is maxed out.
Right, this is why I figured getting one card from maxed out to zero would make some sort of difference!
I understand the overall util and the util on the second card are still high (working on that!) but I figured individually, they would make a difference too (albeit a small one).
Oh well. I'll get there eventually. I have a year to improve my score so like I said, not a huge hurry. Just looking for some motivation along the way