Chuck wrote:
When the first bank crunch hit, my bank cut off our line of credit for my business even though it was paid in full. When I needed the money they cut me off. To compensate I opened several credit cards up in order to cover my company's needs. This dropped my score from a bit over 700 down to it's present 600.
USBank 8859.00Bal CL 9400.00
CITI 8188.00Bal Shows neither a CL or highest balance
Chase 3272.00bal CL3200.00
Merrick 1793.00bal CL 2050.00
Household 823.00bal CL 1300.00
Household 0 Bal CL500.00
BOA 10849.00Bal High Balance 11692.00
BOA 4137.00Bal High Bal 4767.00
None of these accounts ever were late All report current and Pays as Agreed.
I plan to pay down approx 22000.00 this week and the rest of the balances to zero within 60 days. Someone told me that an account like CITI killed your score because it carried a balance and had no CL or high score.
What accounts should I apply the payments to?
If the information that you reported for Chase is correct - that you are over the credit limit - then that would be your target, since you're probably being hit with hefty overbalance fees.
Once you're comfortably within the CL of the Chase card, the smartest financial thing for you to do is to pay down/off the cards with the highest interest rates. If you're like many of us here, you've probably been informed of increased interest rates on many of your cards, since the credit card issuers were positioning themselves for maximum profit before the new credit card law went into effect last week.
If I were in your shoes, I'd focus more on saving money (by paying down the high APR cards) than on your score. Even if you paid off about half of your current balances, your utilization is still going to be relatively high (in the 40% range), so your FICO score may not improve by as much as you might hope. YMMV.
