Hi, marv, welcome to the forums!
It sounds like you have what you need for now. I treat all my CC's, including credit cards, as if they were debit cards. In other words, if I don't have the money in the bank, I don't use them. I pay them off BEFORE the statement drops, so that they report $0 balance and 0% util to the credit bureaus, which definitely helps my scores (and my peace of mind.) Let one report a balance each month, and then immediately PIF. On that card, you can pay all but $10 (as an example) early and let the $10 report, to give you really low util. Just don't forget to then pay it off. Doesn't matter which card --you can rotate it around, or always let it be the same one.
It doesn't matter to the creditors whether you pay before or after the statement drops --that's just a scoring tactic. You do want to air each card out frequently though, so they don't get canceled for inactivity. Those two that you don't use often need to see daylight every other month or so. Put a tank of gas on each, and then pay them off. Or if you have a recurring bill (cell, utilities, charity, newspaper), you can put it on a card and keep it active that way.
You especially want to PIF store cards, as they generally have breathtaking APR's.
If you currently have balances, you'll want to work toward no ongoing balances, which will put you in charge of your credit. I use plastic for just about everything, but I have very little debt.
After you do this for a while, you will see slow and steady score improvement, because you're adding current clean history, which shoves the problem history further and further back. The new FICO 08 scoring formulas (whenever they stagger into use) will concentrate more on the most recent 24 months, so every month of good behavior now will lessen the impact of any baddies in the past. Good luck!
Oh, BTW, how to edit: go to the post you want to edit. Click on "Options" in the top right corner of that particular post. You'll see "Edit message" as the first option. Click that, and then you can highlight anything that you want to delete and erase it, or put your cursor wherever to add. At the end, click "Preview Post" at the bottom right of your text box to see if it looks right. And if you're in Firefox, be sure to check "Automatically convert carriage returns to HTML line breaks" at the bottom left, or your paragraphs will vanish, and you'll be left with a giant blob of text. HTH
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
