As a fellow veteran, I salute you for your service and welcome to My Fico Forums, @Anonymous! 
Congratulations on looking for ways to improve your credit file. You've come to a good place and you'll find much worthwhile advice here!
- Your scores are already in a pretty decent place, and the worst thing I see is all those late payments on your auto loan. Time will heal those as long as you continue to use your credit responsibly and make ontime payments.
- You had (3) new credit accounts in 2019 and (2) new credit accounts in 2020, so you're proceeding at a reasonable rate. Some people get too ambitious and overdo it in adding new accounts. Adding no more than about one new account every six months is a good pace to strive for, especially with a younger file.
- Your utilization is reasonable with about 25% on the Military Star and 19% overall. Lowering utilization can and will help your scores eventually but there's no huge rush to pay off 0% debt to do so, especially if you're not applying for new credit.
- Definitely applying for credit limit increases on all your accounts every six months is a great way to also help your utilization. Plus, higher limits on your existing cards shows other lenders you can be trusted at those levels and helps to get higher limits on new cards. Just remember that some (like USAA) will do a hard pull on your report to approve one, so be careful of adding too many hard pulls for CLI's too quickly. Other lenders are great about doing primarily soft pull CLIs. Some of us have set calendar reminders to ask for another.
- Rotating your cards and using them is important. For one, cards can be closed if not used often enough and with a younger file like yours, you'd want to avoid that. It doesn't have to be every month, but bring them all out of your wallet at least every 3-6 months to put some charges on them. Bonus if they pay rewards, since you won't get that on your debit card. I never use debit cards. If you can be disciplined enough not to use more credit than you can afford to pay off, there's really no reason to use them for purchases. Credit cards have better consumer protections and pay you rewards!
- Using your cards makes sure the lender keeps reporting "paid as agreed" to the CRB (credit reporting bureaus.) Most will do it anyway on an idle card, but that just prompts it. While you're using your cards, remember that there's never any need to "carry" a balance or pay interest to build your credit. If you allow balances to post, pay them off in full before the due date.
- If you're trying to optimize your credit scores, the lowest threshold for utilization kicks in about 8.9% or under. There's also technique called Azeo (All zero except one) where you pay off all cards except one, and allow that card to report at somewhere between about $5 (minimum reporting amount to CRB) and 1% of the credit limit. That will help optimize your scores but is mostly useful right before applying for new credit.
- PenFed and Navy Federal are both excellent credit unions, and I would highly recommend them. Yes, opening deposit accounts and building relationship may help your approval odds for credit cards down the road. And they both offer some other highly compeitive deposit account and loan products.
Hope this is all helpful and again, welcome to the forums!
Welcome, @Anonymous.
I'll reiterate that you don't need to revolve a balance (and likely pay interest) to avoid FICO's "all cards at zero" penalty. The balances that report are ideally from new charges. While scoring doesn't care if your balance is new or if it has been carried for months, lenders may care about balances that are dragged out without a significant dent being made in them.
None of your cards has a balance over 29% of its limit. And soon, half of them will have balances of zero. That's a good look.
If you need to chew out every possible point, as mentioned, you can do AZEO. That's where all cards except for one report a balance of zero, with the remaining card reporting a balance of at least $5 but not much more. The card with the positive balance is ideally a major card, i.e. a Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express card.
Your idea of paying down 1k now probably isn't necessary. But it does improve your "look" by a bit. I'd do it given that you're able to.
Go ahead and get started with Navy right after all of your lowered balances report. I don't see anything that would stop you from being approved for a nice card with a decent limit.
I think it is time to promote @Aim_High to moderator or community leader or something. The guy writes amazingly well, he answers a lot of questions for newcomers, and what he says is always on point.
@digitek wrote:I think it is time to promote @Aim_High to moderator or community leader or something. The guy writes amazingly well and what he says is always on point.
I appreciate the kind words, @digitek. I enjoy writing and helping others so My Fico give me an outlet for both! I'm glad to give back to the community for all the knowledge and support I've received here.
I second or tenth the recomendation for Navy Federal and/or PenFed.
From other users experiences, Navy Federal seems to be more lienent with blemishes on credit members history as well. However PenFed's credit cards are also very popular on this forum.
