@Alex311 wrote:Hello. I'm in the process of buying a house and trying to bump up my middle score which is Equifax 690. My OVERALL credit utilization is 34%. i have 3 cards that have a balance on them, 2 are below 30% and one is at 90%. For a short term strategy Would it be better for my score to pay OFF the two cards that have a low utilization OR pay DOWN the card that is at 90%, I could pay it down to about 50% in a month.
thank you in advance!
There are important advantages in the mortgage scores to increasing the number of zero balances, but I am guessing that wrestling your 90% account down to 48% (NOT 50%) will outweigh them, and get you more points.
Knocking that 90% utilization card down to below 49% should give you a nice boost.
It will get you below the worst of the score penalty break points for utilization on a single card, AND sounds like it may get you below the 30% break point for agrigate utilization.
How many total cards do you have? Hopefully more than 3. Get below 48.9% on the one and the others 28.9%. Aggregate should go below 28.9% and that will help. If you have only 3 cards and they all have balances. That dings also.
