Will my score improve??

[Anonymous]

I have 3 credit cards. All new within the last 4 months. Paid on time. With utilization below 30%. Also have a car payment that is new and paid on time. My credit seems to have flatlined around 680(fico). I also have student loans that defaulted 4 years ago, but are in good standing today. 

How can i improve my score into the 700's? I do not have the cash flow to pay down my car or student loans right now.

[StartingOver10]

If you have 3 new cards and are leaving balances on all three, that is the issue. Pay off two of your cc's.

Rotate those reported balances among the 3 cards and you will see a better score.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have 3 credit cards. All new within the last 4 months. Paid on time. With utilization below 30%. Also have a car payment that is new and paid on time. My credit seems to have flatlined around 680(fico). I also have student loans that defaulted 4 years ago, but are in good standing today. 

How can i improve my score into the 700's? I do not have the cash flow to pay down my car or student loans right now.

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Three cards is good. Try to keep aggregate (all cards combined) utilization under 9% with only one card reporting a balance. The card you do let report, keep its reporting utilization under 30% - no need to be at 9% on the card that does report a balance just so long as you stay under 9% UT in aggregate. 

Where are you at currently with overall debt to loan ratio on your two installment loans? How many months old is your car loan? I have read that there may be some benefit to score once a new loan passes 90 days (may not see the impact until 120 days if that is true). Not much to do on the possible age affect other than wait and see.

[Anonymous]

my car loan was opened in August. 

And i read up on the low balances in regards to the credit cards. I thought it was good to keep balanaces if they are low. So thats what i did. 

And my loans are being deferred til i graduate in 14 months. They collect interest and are reported as being paid. 

[Thomas_Thumb]

OK - it appears that you need to live with the score hit associated with a very high debt to loan ratio.

That leaves you with manipulating # cards reporting a balance and UT % on your revolving credit card accounts. Reporting a balance one one card vs three cards may gain you 15 points. Since your UT % is already low, no more points there. The rest is wait and see.

[Anonymous]

so what your saying is i kind of bottomed out on my score. And the only way to improve it is to pay down loans?

[Anonymous]

Why do you want to have a score in the 700s right now?

Is there a particular reason or will it just make you feel better to see 700?

If you want to boost your score into the 700s to app for something, I can understand that, but 3 new cards (your only cards) and an auto loan in 4 months isn't going to help you in that department.

If you want to boost your score into the 700s just to see the score, you will need to optimize your score.

In order to optimize your score, you may want to read this http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/WhatsInYourScore.aspx

Length of Credit History - not much you can do here, but keep paying you bills

Payments History - You don't have much history, but you can keep paying your bills on time

You might get a boost to the two above if you can find someone to make you an Authorized User on an older card

Credit Mix - You have cards and you have installment loans - not much you can do here

Amounts Owed - This is what you can really control.  You say you don't have money to pay down your installment loans, but maybe you can pay down on your credit cards and get your revolving utilization down lower.  It has also been shown here and other places that reporting a small balance on a single card generally produces higher scores than reporting balances on multiple cards.

Unless you are apping for something and many will probably tell you that you shouldn't be at this point, then just keep paying your bills on time and you will be in the 700s soon.

[Anonymous]

I have a very good reason. When i got my car, i was financed at 7.9% with around a 650 score. I paid about 1/3 car down already. So i want to refinance to lower my payment in half. 

[Anonymous]

If you must do it now, the best you can do with what you have is let your utilization report on one card (as SO and TT have said above) and I believe you will find that just under 4.5% of your total limits on a single card will provide you the highest FICO 8 score.

[bdhu2001]

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@Anonymous wrote:

so what your saying is i kind of bottomed out on my score. And the only way to improve it is to pay down loans?

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No.  What everyone is trying to explain is that only one card should report a balance.  It's best for the balance to be less than 10%.  You need to make sure that you've paid off two cards off by due date and that the two cards have a $0 balance on statement cut date.  

For most of us it's easiest to simply not use the card after we pay it off until a couple days after the statement cut. For the card that will report a balance, you pay (at a minimum) the full amount that was due on your previous statement. This will give you the benefit of a low reporting balance w/o paying interest. As a caveat if the balance left on the card would be more than 10% of the available, you pay more than the previous balance.