@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for the info! My biggest ding was 3-30 day lates. Two were with Macy's 1/04 and 6/06 and the other was BOA 4/06. How big of an impact do you think this has?
I'd guess that the lates aren't costing more than 10 points total. 30's hurt a lot for one year, a little for the second year, and then they're mostly just embarrassing. Your BOA late will go over 2 years in April and your second Macy's in June, so you might get up to 5 points on each, from where your scores are now.Yep, it's the util that's killing you. With three older 30-days being your only derogatories, I would expect you to be in the mid-700's, at a guess.
Also my Util is incredibly high. I renovated my basement this past year and took out a bunch of 0% interest on several cards. I didn't know any better and maxed out almost all of them. Most of my util are over 80%. My HELOC is maxed out and I don't think I will get a high enough CL to balance transfer any of the debt. I owe about 64K. When I did the FICO simulator I got the same score adjustment whether I payed off 8K or 30K. Do you think this is true? I have about 15K to play with, but I want to save some of the money towards a down payment on a new car. My DTI is fine as far as affordability but I want to make sure I get the best rate on a new car/lease.What do you think I should do?
How big is the credit limit on your HELOC? If it's big enough, it's being treated as installment, and it doesn't factor into your revolving util. $50K CL is high enough for sure (personal experience), $40K is maybe high enough, $25K is probably being treated like a maxed-out $25K card.
Is there any chance that you can get a personal loan? Be sure it's from a credit union or bank. If it's from a business with "finance" in its name (Citifinance, Wells Fargo Finance, etc) it's scored as a "consumer finance loan", and it hurts your scores some. But if you can shift a chunk of CC debt over to an installment loan, it will do wonders. And again, the installment util doesn't factor into the revolving util.
There are two tactics for reducing util, one for scoring sense and one for financial sense. As you're going for scores, I'll deal with that one. (The financial one is to pay highest APR's first, etc.)
1) Assuming that your HELOC is big enough, don't worry about it for now.
2) Get all cards under 80% util.
3) Then get as many as possible under 50% util.
4) If you have any low CL cards, like store cards, or cards with low balances, PIF them.
5) Make all payments online 4-5 days before your statement posts, and check to see if that new low balance shows up on the statement.
6) Don't use your cards at all in the interim other than for stuff that you would otherwise pay cash or write a check for (groceries, gas, etc.) No charging for now, unless you would normally pay it off anyway.
Without knowing the breakdown on your cards, I can't get any more specific than that. But those are your priorities: everything under 80% (= not maxed out), at least half under 50% (eventually under 30% and then 10% ), and as many as you possibly can at $0. If you can hold off on the leasing for several more months, it gets you in an even better state.
Util is fun to mess with (if you have the money), because you get fast results, and the before and after can be huge. When a new 30-day late posted last May, my EQ was 590. By slashing util to under 1%, and only one card reporting, plus some blessed aging of lates, it is now 728. That's in 9 months. It can be quicker for you, because you don't have current lates to wait out.
Please post back with the new scores! We all eat up stories like these.
Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 02-10-2008 12:26 PM
See, now you're dealing with the handling of util for financial strategy, instead of for scoring! 
How many 0% cards are you using, and out of a total of how many cards? If you have a total of 7 cards for instance, and only 3 are 0%, you might do an initial paydown of the 4 non-0%'s, even zero them out, and see what that does with your scores --a two-step approach. We have had members report that they had a card at 85% for BT purposes, and they weren't penalized, while others got hit hard.
If you're willing, you can post your cards here (card A, card B, and so forth) with current balance, credit limit, and APR on each one, plus how much total $ you think that you might have available for payments, and get some feedback on strategy. It's possible that if you can get enough zeroed out and let the 0%'s stay at relatively high util, you'll get enough of a bump, depending on how many cards you have. Since your overall util is 42%, that might be enough to do the trick. What score are you shooting for, and do you know if it will be a particular CRA?
And I really doubt that those lates are doing you any harm to speak of in terms of scores.
How many 0% cards are you using, and out of a total of how many cards? If you have a total of 7 cards for instance, and only 3 are 0%, you might do an initial paydown of the 4 non-0%'s, even zero them out, and see what that does with your scores --a two-step approach. We have had members report that they had a card at 85% for BT purposes, and they weren't penalized, while others got hit hard.
If you're willing, you can post your cards here (card A, card B, and so forth) with current balance, credit limit, and APR on each one, plus how much total $ you think that you might have available for payments, and get some feedback on strategy. It's possible that if you can get enough zeroed out and let the 0%'s stay at relatively high util, you'll get enough of a bump, depending on how many cards you have. Since your overall util is 42%, that might be enough to do the trick. What score are you shooting for, and do you know if it will be a particular CRA?
And I really doubt that those lates are doing you any harm to speak of in terms of scores.