Well first, simulators are extremely inaccurate. Second, the simulators you used were for VantageScore, not Fico. They react differently to utilization.
If you really want to gauge what will happen you're better off listing your info here and people will make recommendations along with giving you realistic expectations for results
Even the Fico simulators are garbage. I made a thread tracking me paying off a huge amount of debt. It was nowhere close to the reality.
Also, 41-53 points for paying off all your debt is nothing to scoff at. That's pretty good and I'd say within the ballpark of what to expect.
Also, keep in mind if you pay off all debt and show zero utilization, you actually get penalized for it. It's best to keep ONE bankcard reporting a small (<9% of its limit) balance and all other cards at zero balance for optimal scoring.
My advice would be to look at your % utilization PER CARD and whichever of your cards has the highest utilization - put the largest payment you can on that one. Your score has a lot to do with the percentage utilization on a PER CARD basis. Total utilization is factored in, but as an example -- take me. I have $95k in available credit. I threw $300 on my Amex Delta (One of my lowest cards) last month and forgot to check when the monthly bill was going to come. Two days later and the $300 posted, so did my bill. (Totally my fault, I always pay before my bill cuts so it doesn't affect my score) My FICO took a 20 point hit because my utilization on THAT card hit just over 30% while all other cards were at or near zero. My overall utilization is still around 1%, but had I put that $300 on multiple cards instead of one, it would have had a MUCH smaller impact on my score, if any impact at all.
TL;DR - If you're sitting with high utilization, figure out what percentage of each of your cards you're using and every time you make a payment, pay the most to the card with the highest utilization. That will have the biggest impact on your score.
Good Luck! (It's definitely a game, but once you understand the rules, the score starts to make sense)
@Anonymous wrote:So I'm in the process of rebuilding my credit, and so far so good but I need help understanding something.
My score was at 579 at one point after my utilization got out of hand on two of my cards. I pay off a measly $80 and that shoots up my score to 637, while still having over 90% utilization.
Now here is what doesn't make sense to me. Using credit simulators on Experian, Credit Wise, Nerdwallet and Credit Karma, if I were to pay off the remaining debt, over $1200, I'll only go up to about 678-690.
I know they are only estimates but how exactly does this all work?
I imagined it to be much higher.
As @Brian_Earl_Spilner has pointed out, (a) simulators are meaningless and (b) Vantage 3.0 scores are meaningless in terms of FICO scores.
@AlanGJP wrote:My advice would be to look at your % utilization PER CARD and whichever of your cards has the highest utilization - put the largest payment you can on that one. Your score has a lot to do with the percentage utilization on a PER CARD basis. Total utilization is factored in, but as an example -- take me. I have $95k in available credit. I threw $300 on my Amex Delta (One of my lowest cards) last month and forgot to check when the monthly bill was going to come. Two days later and the $300 posted, so did my bill. (Totally my fault, I always pay before my bill cuts so it doesn't affect my score) My FICO took a 20 point hit because my utilization on THAT card hit just over 30% while all other cards were at or near zero. My overall utilization is still around 1%, but had I put that $300 on multiple cards instead of one, it would have had a MUCH smaller impact on my score, if any impact at all.
TL;DR - If you're sitting with high utilization, figure out what percentage of each of your cards you're using and every time you make a payment, pay the most to the card with the highest utilization. That will have the biggest impact on your score.
Good Luck! (It's definitely a game, but once you understand the rules, the score starts to make sense)
Same thing happened to me. I did a balance transfer to my Discover and the transfer put my utilization on that card over 50%. My score took a big hit and went down 25 points! I paid half of that off and have already gained those points back. I'm not too worried about losing points due to utilization right now as I'm not using my credit for anything. We were planning on buying a house this year, but not with the way prices are going in Southern California.
