@happypill wrote:
@heather06 wrote:I currently have a QS card with $5k limit that is almost maxed out. Have had it a little over 2 years and have read you could transfer some of your balance to another new card. My overall utilization is at 56% and I do not have a lot of cash flow to pay down my cards quickly right now so I am trying to find ways to lower my utilization score which seems to be hurting my scores. Would opening a new card with Capital One help with this? I have excellent payment history with all my cards but my credit scores are in the 650's across the board and stuck there until I get my uti down. I am being incredibly cautious about applying for new cards as I only want to do it if it would help my overall score. I did the pre-approved offer online and it only gave me 2 options of QS One Rewards and the Platinum card as I put down I had average credit. If I apply would they HP all my reports? Last HP I got from cc app dropped my score 29 pts :{ so I do not want to do anything that would drop my score too much. Any advice would be much appreciated!
There are some common misconseptions reflected in your post and it's preventing you from make a smart educated decision.
1. If your card with a $5k limit is maxed out, that is undoubtedly the biggest factor impacting your credit score. Being "incredibly cautious" about applying for new cards is not helping or hurting your score in any meaningful way, compared with your maxed out card.
2. It's highly unlikely that a single HP dropped your score by 29 points. First question, was that an actual FICO score or something else like Credit Karma (anything other than a real FICO score is worthless and not to be believed). If it was a real FICO score, the cause of the drop was almost certainly something other than the HP (such as increase in util or decrease in AAoA); it's just that the HP prompted the system to update your score. Unless there's something very weird with your profile, a single HP would probably have an impact of 0-5 points, and within a few months trend down to nothing.
3. You cannot in most cases transfer balances between the same bank.
4. CLI requests are SP with Capital One (99% of the time). Even if it were a HP, it's not going to have any meaningful effect on your score.
So, based on what you shared, your optimal strategy would be to get a new card from a different lender and transfer part of your balance over to it. Obviously, try to look for cards with low fees and low APR on balance transfers. Also, given that utilization is the main thing you need to address, a balance transfer card that offers a high limit would be best. Unfortunately, if you have a card that is maxed out, it will be difficult to get approved for any new card, and very unlikely that it will have a significant limit.
I agree with everything you said except that there's nothing optimal about applying for a new card when you're likely to get turned down, or when you're likely to get a truncated starting limit.
@heather06 wrote:Thanks everyone for your input. So it looks like asking for CLI's for Cap1 or any other cards that do soft pulls would be the best bet
couldn't hurt
and possibly applying for a new card where i can transfer some of the balance from another card.
when you're more likely than not to be approved
Questions: Does anyone know if Comenity HSN does a soft pull for CLI and is it better to call in or do the online button? I believe they gave me a CLI within the last 6 months so not sure how often you should/could ask for one?
For Cap 1 is it better to call in or do button online for CLI?
button online
Does anyone know if Home Depot does a soft pull? I have read that they give some pretty big CLI's and have only had the card since November but only asked for increase upon initially getting approved for the card in November.
Lastly - I have been getting tons of offers in mail for Citi cards. Just went online to the pre-approved offers and have 5 offers showing up - Costco Visa, THank you Preferred, Thank you Premier, Citi Simplicity & Citi Diamond Preferred. It seems that Costco Visa has the best interest rate for me out of the 5 but only a 7 month 0% transfer balance. The screen has since blacked out but I am new to this pre-qualify offers online - so do i log back in and do it again and then apply right online under their offers?
if you're preapproved i guess you might as well go for the one with the longest 0% interest promotion
I do not have the cash flow right now to pay these cards down quickly so my thinking is that if I can transfer even some of the balance from one of the cards and have a new credit line reporting - that should help with my uti score in the short term and hopefully bump my score up a little as i continue to pay down what i can and then hopefully apply for more 0% transfer balance offers in the near future once that score goes up.
also - all my scores i am getting are on Cap1 site, Amazon Credit card, & credit karma & credit sesame.
i don't know about Amazon, but the other 3 are all meaningless Vantage 3.0 scores, not FICO scores
The last TU score i saw was from a car purchase i did 2 months ago that said my score was 667 then which was higher than all of the ones i see on my free credit boards. Should i pull the FICO from here as well to get a more accurate pictures?
Yes definitely
Thanks so much for all your input! I got my score up to 795 13 years ago when i bought my first house by following these boards and the suggestions and am now on that journey again so am very thankful for all the guidance here!
