All the advice on this page is solid and correct.
For maximum benefit to your FICO, of course, pay down all cards except one to zero, leaving a small balance on one major (as another poster indicated). Second best: pay down total balances to below 5.9%, ideally, with no single card having greater than 9.9% utilization, preferably all below 6%.
Once you've done all of that (and given the reporting bureaus enough time to reflect the payments -- which can take as long as a couple of cycles) and for your FICO scores to be properly re-computed, then you have the decision to make. If you do "pull the trigger" on the CLI, you will take a HP -- whether you succeed or not. If you do secure a CLI, the benefit will be to obviously increase total available credit and therefore (assuming you are responsible in future use of creit) decrease liklihood of your overall utilization -- a plus factor in all the FICO scoring models. An additional small benefit is that your average age of accounts (AAOA) will not decrease -- another factor in the scoring models.
An alternative to the CLI request, at that point: you could "spend" that hard pull and seek another credit card. That might, over the long haul, increase the diversity of your card portfolio, while also increasing your available credit, as well. However, you might not get as large a total line as you could possibly end-up with at PenFed (a potentiaal negative) and further, your AAOA would take a hit -- for a long time.
The credit maximization game is a long one and a more subtle an art than might appear at first blush..... keep studying these forums, ask questions and over time, you too can become a Jedi Master (like some of the frequent posters....). I, for one, am still learning.
Best of luck, Young Apprentice!
