topic Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC? in General Credit Topics

Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

MsMoneypeso — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 16:28:29 GMT

We've been trying to increase someone's score swiftly to refinance Mortgage before the rates rise again.

No BK, no DQ, no collections. Just a bunch of accounts with balance - mostly CC.

It's been 2 1/2 weeks, we paid off all CC that were coming due so far. A handful of them posted already but with a small balance for the accrued interest.

The score increase has been painfully slow. I thought it would have jumped up by now, but some of the ones we paid haven't posted yet.

Any suggestions, besides:

Paying off the other CCs until we at least get to the score we wanted?
Pay off the interest from the recently-posted cards?
Don't make any other changes, don't sign up for EX Boost, don't close any accounts?

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

MsMoneypeso — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 17:11:36 GMT

More data points:

AU on a handful of CC with high limit and low/0 balance.

Many personal CC with balance, many 90%+ utilization.

AAoA: 4.8 yr, oldest 26.7 (as an AU)

Current EX utlization 3%.

EX F2 Issues:

High credit usage
Seeking Credit
Short account history (current mortage June 2021)
Accounts with balances

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

FireMedic1 — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 19:35:40 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
More data points:

AU on a handful of CC with high limit and low/0 balance.
Many personal CC with balance, many 90%+ utilization.
AAoA: 4.8 yr, oldest 26.7 (as an AU)
Current EX utlization 3%.

EX F2 Issues:
High credit usage
Seeking Credit
Short account history (current mortage June 2021)
Accounts with balances

Is it 90% or 3%? Once each card is $0 balance and 1 reports is when they'll see a nice score rise. Since they're apping. Its time for AZEO. No special way to do whichever first. Pay the higher interest first to save $. You dont pay off interest on cards just balances. Wish them good luck.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

MsMoneypeso — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 20:02:53 GMT

The overall usage per EX is 3%.

The usage on many of the CC that have been paid and not yet posted, or haven't yet been paid is 90%+.

Our strategy has just been to pay the CCs that are due soonest, check score, lather, rinse, repeat.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

Kforce — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 21:31:23 GMT

The only way to get cards that have had a balance carried for some time to report zero a month sooner is to call and find out what the balance + interest is and either go to the bank/CU and pay or push a payment from billpay to cover full balance + new interest charges. This will shorten the time by one month for a card to report zero.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

FireMedic1 — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 21:48:43 GMT

Im trying to grasp how there are card/s with 90+% that havent been paid and only have 3% overall. Must have a huge total credit line. The 90+% is maxed out and thats a pretty good hit.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

MsMoneypeso — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 22:56:23 GMT

Yeah, the 3% is due to being AU on handful of cards that have low/0 balance and (really) high credit limit.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

pakratus — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 23:33:48 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
...
It's been 2 1/2 weeks, we paid off all CC that were coming due so far. A handful of them posted already but with a small balance for the accrued interest.
...

You don't need to accrue interest, it doesn't do anything for your score.

Your score isn't going to change much in 2 weeks. Banks usually report once a month. When your statement closes and reports, whatever you pay off by your due date doesn't report until the next statement close. By allowing multiple cards report a balance (however small), it's hurting you because you have mulitple cards reporting a balance. Definitely check out the AZEO method.

Get that 90% utilization down, it is considered 'maxed out' for scoring. I believe the thresholds are 90%, 50%, 30%, less being better for your score than more.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

SoCalGardener — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 19:33:58 GMT

The biggest thing that jumps out at me is this:

"Many personal CC with balance, many 90%+ utilization."

It's bad enough to have *one* card reporting at 90%, but MANY?! That's a death knell right there. You're not going to see improvement of any significance until those balances get down to acceptable levels. Conventional wisdom says 30% or less; in reality, the smaller, the better.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

SouthJamaica — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 05:15:26 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
We've been trying to increase someone's score swiftly to refinance Mortgage before the rates rise again.

No BK, no DQ, no collections. Just a bunch of accounts with balance - mostly CC.

It's been 2 1/2 weeks, we paid off all CC that were coming due so far. A handful of them posted already but with a small balance for the accrued interest.

The score increase has been painfully slow. I thought it would have jumped up by now, but some of the ones we paid haven't posted yet.

Any suggestions, besides:
Paying off the other CCs until we at least get to the score we wanted?
Pay off the interest from the recently-posted cards?
Don't make any other changes, don't sign up for EX Boost, don't close any accounts?

Mortgage scores are significantly affected by the number of accounts with balances. It is preferable to have as many zero balance accounts as possible (except that one account should report a balance). So for those accounts which are incurring interest, the borrower should overpay the account before the statement cuts, by an amount sufficient to eliminate the anticipated interest charge.

Pay down any high utilization accounts below thresholds. 2 vital thresholds are 48% and 28%; i.e. try to make sure no accounts report a balance greater than 28% of the credit limit.

Definitely do not apply for anything, and don't sign up for EX boost.

I would NOT close accounts, because the more zero balance accounts the better and the lower utilization percentage the better.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

SouthJamaica — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 05:18:02 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
More data points:

AU on a handful of CC with high limit and low/0 balance.
Many personal CC with balance, many 90%+ utilization.
AAoA: 4.8 yr, oldest 26.7 (as an AU)
Current EX utlization 3%.

EX F2 Issues:
High credit usage
Seeking Credit
Short account history (current mortage June 2021)
Accounts with balances

What? There are accounts with 90% utilization? That has to end before applying for anything.

If those accounts are paid down to 48% there will be a score boost. If they are paid down to 28% there will be an even bigger boost.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

SouthJamaica — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 05:21:38 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
The overall usage per EX is 3%.

The usage on many of the CC that have been paid and not yet posted, or haven't yet been paid is 90%+.

Our strategy has just been to pay the CCs that are due soonest, check score, lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm sorry, but I truly do not understand your first three posts.

You say all accounts which were coming due were paid off.

Then you say that many accounts have 90%+ utilization.

This makes absolutely no sense.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

MsMoneypeso — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 15:03:57 GMT

We paid off the first set of CC that were due, then the next. We're on the last set of CC due since we started this mission.

Yes, the target is AZEO and we plan to hit that by next week, but some of them won't post until the following week. A few CC are from 70-95%.

EX8 is +40, from 659 @Anonymous% to 699 @ 3%

EX2 663 -> 659, wrong direction

I'm hoping EX2 will bump up, but seems to be slower than EX8.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

SouthJamaica — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 16:17:58 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
We paid off the first set of CC that were due, then the next. We're on the last set of CC due since we started this mission.

Yes, the target is AZEO and we plan to hit that by next week, but some of them won't post until the following week. A few CC are from 70-95%.

EX8 is +40, from 659 @Anonymous% to 699 @ 3%
EX2 663 -> 659, wrong direction

I'm hoping EX2 will bump up, but seems to be slower than EX8.

Thanks for clarifying.

Yes, EX 2 works in a more "bumpy", less gradual, way than EX 8.

But if you're increasing zero balances and getting rid of the high utilization balances, you'll pick up points.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

jmw1 — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 17:54:39 GMT

Bottom line AZEO:

One card with a balance no greater than 8.99% of the that card's credit line but at least $1. This card needs to report to all three bureaus. Don't assume any particular card reports to all three bureaus.

All other cards have to be zero. No exceptions. Not even $1. You have to account for interest and fees that will post on the next statement date beforehand or the statement balance will be greater than zero. You probably need to overpay the card to below zero to prepay the interest and fees.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

MsMoneypeso — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 05:53:33 GMT

So, a negative balance doesn't hurt? It would count the same as a zero balance?

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

Ilinferno — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 10:39:24 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
So, a negative balance doesn't hurt? It would count the same as a zero balance?

Correct, last month I had a credit on my Navy Fed card due to overpayment and it just reported as $0.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

JFox418 — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 14:46:06 GMT

I think a list of accounts with balances, credit limits, and due dates would help everyone in the thread and give you a more accurate solution. Maybe note which ones have updated already and are you checking actual FICO scores? Most accounts aren't going to update on reports until a week after due dates.

If you have the money to pay off all the account balances then that is %100 the best option like everyone has mentioned. Pay them all off and leave one account with a balance less than %8 of CL. I was approved for a new mortgage 2 years ago with pretty high balances but otherwise a clean report and it wasn't too hard to get approved with a good rate. Not having balances will definitely get you the best score possible.

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

MsMoneypeso — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 15:15:47 GMT

OK, 4 weeks later....

We began at 11% utilization, down to 2%. We're still not AZEO, about 10 accounts that were zeroed out, haven't posted yet.

Mortgage:

EQ5: 693 -> 737 (+44); TU4: 662 -> 709 (+47); EX2: 635 -> 725 (+90)

FICO 8:

EQ8: 629 -> 684 (+55); TU8: 655 -> 692 (+37); EX8: 659 -> 756 (+97)

Our goal was middle mortgage = 720, we hit that and when the others post we should way overshoot that.

So the easy way of methodically paying off the next batch of accounts to close worked, fairly swiftly. But it sure seemed slow at the time.

Thanks to everyone who contributed advice!

Re: Fix Score Easy/Slow Way: Pay CC?

SouthJamaica — Sun, 19 Dec 2021 17:31:27 GMT

@MsMoneypeso wrote:
OK, 4 weeks later....

We began at 11% utilization, down to 2%. We're still not AZEO, about 10 accounts that were zeroed out, haven't posted yet.

Mortgage:
EQ5: 693 -> 737 (+44); TU4: 662 -> 709 (+47); EX2: 635 -> 725 (+90)

FICO 8:
EQ8: 629 -> 684 (+55); TU8: 655 -> 692 (+37); EX8: 659 -> 756 (+97)

Our goal was middle mortgage = 720, we hit that and when the others post we should way overshoot that.

So the easy way of methodically paying off the next batch of accounts to close worked, fairly swiftly. But it sure seemed slow at the time.

Thanks to everyone who contributed advice!

Nice going Yes when those 10 accounts hit zero you should be even higher. Just make sure 1 bank card account reports a balance before you pay it off.