Short-term, faster would be getting an installment loan. Additionally if you don't have any installment history on your report, likely would help there too.
Long-term, irrelevant, either one works the same as revolving utilization is instant-in-time calculations.
@Anonymous wrote:
@tufa4311 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:Tufa, The OP had a specific objective. He said he is not concerned about how much he pays on interest and he is ONLY concerned about getting his score back up.
Deadcredit, You need to get your head straight with revolving credit. It seems like you acquired all but one of your credit cards recently but ran them all up. New credit is not a shopping spree pass. Below are my recommendations. Bonus, if you do not currently have an installment loan (personal or auto), this should help your score even more.
1) Sock drawer ALL your credit cards
2) Get an installment (not revolving) personal loan for 20% more than your existing credit card debt
3) Pay down all your credit cards to ZERO except your lowest APR credit card and keep a 9% balance on it
4) Use the left over money and pay it back to your personal loan
5) Make minimum payments on the personal loan and a little more than miminum payment on the 9% balance credit card
6) During this process, use all your cards once or twice a year but no more to keep them active but pay in full when your statement arrives
7) Only after you pay down the 9% balance credit card is when you should bring out one or two of your best credit cards permanently from the sock drawer and remember to treat it like an extention of your debit card and always PIF.
I thought it would go without saying that by bringing the UTIL down to next to nothing that it would boost scores in weeks. I shouldn't have assumed you, or the OP, would have known that. To clarify for slipper and the OP, the fact that there is a balance on all those accounts is KILLING his score. My picture looked somewhat the same and after I took out a loan to erase allthe CC debt I gain close to 100 points.
You recommended to take all CC balances to zero (not near zero) and leave it that way until the consolidation loan was paid off. Most experienced forum members (not all apparently) know carrying a zero revolving balance for an extended period of time is good but not optimal and could even result in account closure.
I think tufa wasn't necessarily suggesting paying everything to $0, it was simply airstriking the debt. He like every other regular would absolutely suggest that leaving one revolving tradeline with a balance is effectively optimal.
Anecdotally, a revolving revolving tradeline reporting $0 balance on a card for years is fine: it's about tradeline activity and even paying before the due date consistently won't harm that. I'm fully in the camp of just letting balances report wherever they may unless I'm applying for something, but the typical time period for account closure due to inactivity is on the order of a year for a lot of lenders and as such the once every 3 or 6 months trotting out of the card is generally fine... even if I just drop a small recurring charge on all of them other than the pretty my file up scenario.