@Household61974 hey.....question.... can you wait an additional month to apply for that mtg? if you can, then do that.
the fact is trailing interest will live on all card. when the mtg underwriter looks at your scores after pif they will NOT ding you for trailing interest. The score "boost" you get from a card getting to a 0 balance is a recovery of points penalized by passing different utilization thresholds on that card. 9% and 29% are the lowest barriers where when your utilization crosses them you hit a "penalty" barrier. The higher you go like over 29% or 49% the penalties are higher and if you hit 89% or higher you are whacked. it is a long way back from that...
as a personal suggestion never let a card get past 28.99% utilization that is the top end if you can help it. 9% is better. if you pif every month that is a different thing as there is no utilization hit when you pif before statement close.
Not everyone can do this but IMO should work towards it. The good news however is that utilization has no memory, so once you pay it down you recover those points lost to the barriers.
I don't know the utilization numbers on each card but that is where the "bump" comes from. The underwriter knows this and can, not will but can, prevent those couple dollars from raising your rate, however I would not count on that they usually work on commission or bonus structures.
if you cannot wait, and i assume you have not yet made these payments.
go to each account. find the interest rate and billing cycle. identify the closing date and the due by date, as they are different.
if your closing date is say the 1st of the month and you PIF on the 5th at a minimum you have 5 days of interest to pay. figure that amount out and pay it with the pif the next thing to think of is how long that bank takes to process your payment and record. it I would suggest adding at least 3 more days interest just to be sure.
if it is not used that account will sit with a small credit of maybe 2-10 bucks depending depending on card balance, interest rate and any weird thing that card might do to charge interest.. Discover comes to mind....they are interest plus 20 bucks in most cases but have two other possibilities...figuring it out is on you. AI can help if math isn't your strong suit.
others are right adding a few more dollars to the pif will help. just knowing how much to add is the trick. you would hate to post a 1 dollar debt when you think you are at 0.
good luck
