Hi, Dome,and welcome to the forums.
You are hovering at just below 600.
With four collections on your CR, these are super-killer major derogs. Getting near 700 with collections still reporting will be an extremely high mountain to climb.
Addressing major derogs is usually your best attack on improving your score.
Since you use the statement "paying off the collection" in the same paragraph as obtaining score improvement, unfortunately. it does not work like that.
FICO scoring is a risk-analysis of your likihood of becoming delinquent. Creditors report delinquencies on debt either by OC reporting of monthly delinquencies while their account with you is active, charging off the debt if the delinquencies continue, and then possiblbly by referring the still unpaid debt to a collection agency.
Each of these can be reported separately to your CR, and each harms your FICO score.
FICO scoring does not then erase the original reporting of the prior delinquencies/CO/CA simply because you pay the debt.
They remain. So no FICO gain for simply paying.
There are ways to pay and also secure deletion of prior derogs from your CR, but this requires that you first follow the "payment for deletion" (PFD) offer procedure, which you can find on many, many forum posts.
No creditor ever has to accept a PFD offer, so you are gambling when you go that route.
Not to beat a dead horse, but assume you get a PFD agreement with a CA, and the CA then deletes their reporting.
That does not requrie the OC on that debt to delete their prior reporting of any delinquencies (or a charge off) that preceded the collection. So major derogs on that one debt may still remain in your CR, even with deletion of the CA. I know, frustrating, but that is the way it works.
The only assured way of deletion is to wait for 7 years to expire from monthly OC acount delinquencies, and for 7 1/2 years to expire from the date of first delinquency on the OC account for any CO or CA reported.
Next is your utiliation of existing revolving credit. I am not sure from your post whether you have $3600 in credit, with unspecified debt, or $3600 in debt, with unspecified credit limit.
For the most part (an there are tweeks that are not really important at this time), it is not your current CC debt or CC limit that is scored directly by FICO.
It is your percent util of each card against its credit limit. Debt on each card divided by its credit limit, and overall debt divided by overall credit limit.
Thus, specifics on each account CL and current balance is needed before improvement of utilization advice can be offered.
As for the inquiries, just stop appling for new credit! FICO does not score credit inquiries after 12-months from date of inquiry.
You can get to 700 if you get deletion of all the major derogs, and get your individual and overall % util down below 20%, and hopefuly 10%.
Very dfficult!
