topic Re: Paying off discover card in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Paying off discover card

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 19:56:15 GMT

Before I start I just want to say how helpful everyone is in these forums. Now I want to say I have a discover card with a max balance of 2000. My last reported amount was around $1456 to the credit bureau when the statement closed. Im now sitting at $1767. My question is the number of credit score points that will increase depend on how much you lower your balance from the last reported one. For example If i were to bring my account down to 500 from where it was reported last at $1456 will that make a bigger impact. Then if I were to bring down to just 1000 from last reported amount of $1456. Any tips of paying off to achieve good credit increase will be helpful. My score right now sits 585 with transunion which discover uses

Re: Paying off discover card

Grizzly1 — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:07:32 GMT

If you paid your balance down to $500, that would bring your utilization to under 30% which is considered good, but if you got it down to under $180 youd see the most improvement in your score. How much depends on what your credit report looks like so YMMV.

Re: Paying off discover card

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:44:46 GMT

OP, you'd have to list out all of your cards with their balances and limits if you want a solid answer. We don't know if this Discover card is your only revolver, or if you have a bunch. The answer to that can mean the difference between a 5-10 point change or a 50-70 point change when talking a reported balance change on the Discover card.

Re: Paying off discover card

SEAlifer — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 06:18:28 GMT

It’s all about total utilization. So if that’s your only card, paying it off entirely will have a larger bump than if you have additional credit limits with other cards. No one would be able to tell you a for sure number because it’s going to vary a ton person to person. You have to kind of see what it does to your score. If you’re cruising on a 0% APR intro period you can experiment by paying off a little, waiting for it to reflect on your report then pay it all or most of it off and see what the difference is. If not 0%, paying interest isn’t worth the experiment, IMHO. Welcome to the forums!