Credit Card Paydown - How to Max Credit Score? Help!!

[MBOhio2]

Hi All - I have 4 credit cards that are all maxed out. Below is a list of their limits. I will be getting a chunk of money - $8,500 - next month and I am planning to use every bit of it to pay down credit card debt, but I also want to refinance my student loans in coming months, so I want to pay down the CCs in a way that maximizes my credit score bump (at this time, the best credit score is my priority, so I do not care about the interest rates on the cards). As you can see, I will have $8,500 but I have $14,750 in debt. So here's my question, how should I use this money? I know there are experts here that know how to maximum credit score with CC utilization - here are options that I've considered:

- Pay a proportionate amount to each, so each CC would be using about 43% of available credit

- Pay off the two smallest cards to $0, but then the higher balance cards would have higher % utilization

- Pay the two smallest cards below 30%, but then the two higher cards would be above 50%

HELP! What's the best option based on credit burea formulas? Specifically TransUnion because that's who my student loan consolidation company uses. Thanks!

CC 1 - $1,750 limit, maxed out

CC 2 - $2,500 limit, maxed out

CC 3 - $4,500 limit, maxed out

CC 4 - $6,000 limit, maxed out

TOTAL = $14,750 CC debt

[coreysw12]

You'll probably get a few different answers on how to handle this, but here's what I would do.

In an ideal world, your goal should be AZEO (all zero, except one), with the one that has a balance being under 8.9% of its SL.

But your situation isn't conducive to that, since you don't have enough to pay all your balances that low. So what I would do is pay down all of your cards so that they all have exactly 44% utilization.

In my opinion, having 44% utilization across all your cards is better than having 0% on some and 100% on others.

So your payments to each CC would be:

CC 1: $980

CC 2: $1400

CC 3: $2520

CC 4: $3360

=$8,260.

Use the extra $240 to buy an awesome steak dinner and some wine

[FireMedic1]

You get a ding for all accounts having a balance. Pay down the lowest ones #1,#2,#3 to 0 and apply the rest to the remaining one. Carrying maxed out cards could get you balance chased if you dont act soon. Then pay down the last one until you get it under control and dont use the cards till then. You'll get a nice score boost too. Welcome to the forums.