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How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?

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Anonymous
Not applicable

How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?

Since I have $5,000 in cash, I could use it to pay down some of my credit card debt, which is around $40,000. Would doing so be a good idea if, within two weeks, I expect to apply for a personal loan and obviously would like the best rate? Assuming no negative factors except high credit utilization, how much should this payment improve a below average score of 640? On the other hand, within 4 weeks from now (unless the loan amount becomes available for use sooner than expected), I will just have to request a cash advance of $2500 for routine living expenses, paying a 3% origination fee for the cash advance. With the loan I expect to pay off all the credit card debt, yet have new monthly loan payments of at least $600. Not a pretty picture, but what makes sense?

 

6 REPLIES 6
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?

Without knowing your total limit, we can't know exactly, but I'm guessing 5000 on 40000 not be taking your utilization below one of the thresholds and wouldn't have much effect. (I'm guessing your utilization is well above 30% right now, but that's not necessarily correct(

Message 2 of 7
SouthJamaica
Mega Contributor

Re: How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?


@Anonymous wrote:

Since I have $5,000 in cash, I could use it to pay down some of my credit card debt, which is around $40,000. Would doing so be a good idea if, within two weeks, I expect to apply for a personal loan and obviously would like the best rate? Assuming no negative factors except high credit utilization, how much should this payment improve a below average score of 640? On the other hand, within 4 weeks from now (unless the loan amount becomes available for use sooner than expected), I will just have to request a cash advance of $2500 for routine living expenses, paying a 3% origination fee for the cash advance. With the loan I expect to pay off all the credit card debt, yet have new monthly loan payments of at least $600. Not a pretty picture, but what makes sense?

 


Yes it makes sense to apply it to your credit card debt, but no one can know how much of a score improvement there will be. It won't be much. My advice would be to apply it to your highest utilization account, or to try and bring a couple of accounts down to zero. BTW 2 weeks isn't enough to be sure your payment(s) will even be reflected, so if you can, try to make the payments towards accounts which are reporting within the next 2 weeks.


Total revolving limits 741200 (620700 reporting) FICO 8: EQ 701 TU 704 EX 685

Message 3 of 7
coreysw12
Valued Contributor

Re: How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?

In your scenario, I don't think I'd consider the potential for FICO score improvement to be a motivating factor for whether or not to apply your $5k to your balances... I'd just do it, regardless.

 

That said.. your score probably won't improve a lot, but I'd bet you'll get a couple points for it. Maybe up to 5 points. It certainly won't be an earth-shattering 50pt gain or anything like that.

 

But the inportant thing is you'll be 12% closer to being free of credit card debt, so regardless of your score boost, that's a very good thing.

    Total Loan Balance: $43k / $65k


    Total SL: $78k

United 1K - 725,000 lifetime flight miles    |    Chase Status: 4/24
Message 4 of 7
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?

Could be anything from 0 points to perhaps 15 points, depending on if/which threshold is potentially crossed.

 

As someone already mentioned above, we'd need to know your before/after aggregate utilization as well as the before/after utilization on the card(s) (really all your cards) you're planning on paying down.

Message 5 of 7
jamesdwi
Valued Contributor

Re: How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?

First get a copy of your credit report, upto date as possible even if its from CreditKarma or other.  You want to see reporting balance vs Credit limit, use the money to pay down all cards to less than 60% UTL, if possible 30%. if you have any  SP CLI friendly lenders, ask for CLI's check on here for Syncrony back door numbers for Walmart, Sam's Club and Amazon cards, shoot for the moon, ask for 10k or more they will counter you, and see if you can further improve your UTL over all. Don't apply for new credit or go for HP CLI's. You want to have as much time from last card or HP as possible before you apply for your consolidation Loan, Marcus gave me 5.99% APR after I had did those steps and got my UTL under 30% on all cards.  

Good luck. 


Cards: Chase Southwest 20k & CSR 17k & CSP 10k & FNBO 30k Oregon Duck 5k, & AMEX BCP 32.5k & Amex Magnet 15k&amg; Hilton Surpass 7.5k & Delta Gold 12k & Zync NPSL, Fidelity AMEX 17k Commerce5.9k & Cash Forward 7.5k & Sams Club MC 20k, Paypal Extras MC 10k, Paypal Credit 7.25k CapOne Venture 15k, QS 2.5k, QS 750, Amazon 10k, Walmart 10k, Citi Simplicity 18k, Discover IT 23k and a nice stack of store cards.
Landmarkcu Personal Loan 10k
Message 6 of 7
babbles
Established Contributor

Re: How much should a $5,000 payment improve my FICO score?

Just paid off a navy federal credit card with a balance of $9512 out of a high of 24k and a paypal account with a balance of $4165 out of $8440.  Pretty much drained  my savings doing it but was tired of max $400 and $150 payments on both accounts each month.  Had to take screen shots of both for my satifaction and pleasure!  Smiley Happy  Heard paypal was going to start reporting to the credit bureaus so it scared me into paying that thing off real quick!  I am waiting for both to hit my credit files;  navy federal on about the 23 of the month or so and paypal about the 15th.  I'll let you know how much of a bump I get.  I have total credit card highs of 49k, zero balances and 2 installment debts left.

Message 7 of 7
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