674 to 800 in 6 weeks? Maybe!

[Anonymous]

So my Ex Fico8 score as of mid-August was 673. I have a clean, aged, thick file with 1 30D late from mid-2018. My wife and I had approximately 80k in CC debt with about 80% util (most accounts are joint or we are AU in the other's account. 
We came into $50k recently and decided to really tackle our debt and scores. We were able to pay our CC down to $19k, max util on any card is 18%, several are paid off. I also managed to get my 30D removed from my report. Here's how my scores have gone up over the last month as my CC have been reporting. 
8/15 674

8/24 687

8/28 699

9/8   742 

As of now it's still reporting util at 53%, and in reality is about 25%, so my score is going to continue to climb over the next 3 weeks. I also will be able to pay off one additional card to zero in the next few weeks. I'm excited for the climb!

Feel free to ask any questions. 

[AllZero]

Congratulations on your success!

[CreditInspired]

Congrats on getting CC debt paid down. You must feel like a heavy, heavy burden has been lifted. 

My questions

*TU & EQ FICO scores

*Average age of accounts

[Anonymous]

@CreditInspired You have NO idea! Or maybe you do, but it's such a relief. We've been swimming in this debt for about 10 years now because we used CC to do an addition on our house, and lots of other bad credit decisions. For about the last 3 years we've stopped adding debt, but our min payments were $1600, with $1100 going to interest. Hard to get ahead that way, especially because we were using credit cards to pay for daily expenses so we could pay our CC bills. Luckily I've made all payments on time (save for 1 30D for a $35 Kohl's payment, ouch). Continuing to make $1400 payments on the CC, we should be paid off in about a year, since now we'll be able to refi our house from 5.75% to 2.5% on our 1st and 10.5% to 2.5% on our second with our great new scores and save an extra couple hundred every month. I'm so excited!

[Jetiquette]

Congrats on your success! My TU on CK was 681 on Aug 17th. As of today, it is 780. This is my first month doing FICO and my scores have no updated yet so I cannot compare my FICO changes.

[FlaDude]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@CreditInspired You have NO idea! Or maybe you do, but it's such a relief. We've been swimming in this debt for about 10 years now because we used CC to do an addition on our house, and lots of other bad credit decisions. For about the last 3 years we've stopped adding debt, but our min payments were $1600, with $1100 going to interest. Hard to get ahead that way, especially because we were using credit cards to pay for daily expenses so we could pay our CC bills. Luckily I've made all payments on time (save for 1 30D for a $35 Kohl's payment, ouch). Continuing to make $1400 payments on the CC, we should be paid off in about a year, since now we'll be able to refi our house from 5.75% to 2.5% on our 1st and 10.5% to 2.5% on our second with our great new scores and save an extra couple hundred every month. I'm so excited!

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Congrats! A windfall like that really helps. About 4 years ago now we had about 80k in CC debt and had been carrying large amounts for a couple of decades. Min payments were about 2k/mo, with about half of that going to interest. We were in the same boat, making min payments, and then charging the cards back to limits every month.

I have no idea how much interest we've paid over the years, but between credit cards, consolidation loans/second mortgates to pay down credit cards, I expect it was at least $200k over the past 25 years. Now down to 12k and targeted to be paid by February and already it feels much less crushing than it did. Refinancing to lower rates via loans and BTs was a big key to our sucess, along with some solid improvements in income.

[Anonymous]

Update: A card that had been reporting with a high balance and 98% util reported at 28% yesterday, and my EX Fico8 score jumped from 742 to 797 today. It's getting exciting!

[Anonymous]

@FlaDude Congrats on your success. We're budgeting that we will be completely paid in our CC debt in about a year. The $50k wasn't a windfall, I decided to cash out some of my 401k so that we could get into a position to refi our house. Hoping to have the $50k paid back within 3 years and then will continue to make bigger 401k payments in the future to catch up. 

[Anonymous]

Score updates today. I'm officially in the 800 club. My Ex Fixo8 went up 24 points to 821. My util is reporting ar 25%, so I'm getting pretty close to done going up for now. I have two CC that reported a very small balance (under $30) that reported before I could PIF, so they will report PIF next month which should give me another small boost. 

My Ex Fixo2 (mortgage) is 787. I'm hoping those two additional cards that will report PIF, along with a third that I will pay off this month will bring my mortgage score over 800 for my upcoming refi. Thanks to everyone in this forum for the advice over the last couple months!

[coreysw12]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Score updates today. I'm officially in the 800 club. My Ex Fixo8 went up 24 points to 821. My util is reporting ar 25%, so I'm getting pretty close to done going up for now. I have two CC that reported a very small balance (under $30) that reported before I could PIF, so they will report PIF next month which should give me another small boost. 

My Ex Fixo2 (mortgage) is 787. I'm hoping those two additional cards that will report PIF, along with a third that I will pay off this month will bring my mortgage score over 800 for my upcoming refi. Thanks to everyone in this forum for the advice over the last couple months!

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That's awesome! Great job!

I'm in a similar situation, my utilization was starting to get really high ~70%, so I sold some investments and started paying it down this month. So far only one of the cards has reported the new paid off balance. I'm very curious to see what my scores will look like when my utilization finally drops down to the teens! Probably not 800's, but hoping for at least low-to-mid 700's