HELP HELP HELP

[Anonymous]

I have a question that I hope you all can help me with.  I have a total of 5 revolving lines:

1. Dell 150/3000

2. Target 200/500

3. Cap One 200/500

4. Amex 4000/7000

5. Ikea 1200/1500

My credit is pretty good now and know that it would be better with lower balances.  I am trying to pay down my balances and would like to know where I should begin.  Do I pay off one first or smaller payments between all of the cards?  Please advise.  Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Usually the ones with the highest interest rates.....

[Anonymous]

I the interest rates are not an issue for me.  I just want to know, strategically, which ones I should pay off first.  Again, one at a time or smaller payments over all of the cards?  This is for FICO scoring purposes.

[Anonymous]

Easiest way:

Pay minimum balances on all but one card(either highest interest rate or lowest balance), make large payments on that one until it's paid off/down. Then you would apply that amount to the next card in addition to its' minimum payment. Example:

You pay $25/month on all cards except one you pay $75.

Once that one is paid off, you apply the $75 to the next one in line. Then you're paying $100 until it's done.

Then you take that $100/month and apply it to the next one paying $125/month on it.

Keep going until they're all paid down/off.

Edit: FICO doesn't care which ones you're paying off as long as the over all balance to limit ratio is lowered.

Message Edited by Shnapple on 04-25-2008 07:38 AM

[Anonymous]

There isn't really a strategy...paying off any one will decrease your UTL...it's counted as a whole...not by every individual card....but most people say to pay down under10% UTL...for the biggest impact to your scores...

[Anonymous]

Since you're interested solely in a FICO score increase, my advice would be to first pay off the 3 low balances (Dell, Target, & Cap1). This will result in less than half your CLs reporting a balance, which FICO likes. Then focus on getting Amex and IKEA down to under 49% util each. You don't have that far to go with Amex - a little over $500 will do it. Once they're both under 49%, I'd pay a roughly equal amount on both to keep the overall util and individual util going down.

[Anonymous]

So there was my confustio them.  I thought I read on here that FICO considers overall utilization as well as individual utilization.  So just to be sure it is the overall utilization????  Right now I am at overall 42%

Message Edited by loloswims on 04-25-2008 07:49 AM

[athensguy]

FICO apparently counts both overall uti and individual card uti, so you want overall to be 10% and each card to have less than 10%. Also, you'd want less than half of your cards to report a balance, and half or fewer of all of your accounts (including installment, other, and revolving, etc) to report a balance, so if you have a mortgage and a car loan, and you want to have 3 cards able to report a balance, you'd need 5+ $0 cards to balance them out.

[Anonymous]

so what is the correct answer?  Overall or individual util in regards to FICO scoring?  Some of you have said only overall counts while others have said both count?

[Anonymous]

Nobody knows for sure - and FICO ain't tellin.

But from what I've read on these boards, anecdotal evidence (from user experience) seems to point to both individual and overall util counting.