I have a slew of charge offs and credit cards with high utility. All the open cards have no lates and are in good standing (other than the high utilization)
I recently paid off a few smaller charge offs and I am in a payment plan for the rest. None of the payment plans have any interest being assessed. All of the payments are low and will take years to pay off if I were to only pay the minimum
I have extra money monthly to pay down all the debt and I am trying to figure out which is best in the short and long term.
Should I pay the charge offs first? Is there any benefit to getting those paid off first? Or should I focus on my current open accounts that are accumulating interest? Paying more on the charge offs will have a greater impact because of the lack of interest but it will cost me more in the long term.
Ideally what I would like is to get to a point where all of the debt is low enough that I could get a personal loan at a reasonable rate to pay it all off. So I am seeking a combination of reducing my overall balances but also improving my credit score so I could qualify. So I’m not sure if paying off the charge offs quicker will boost my score more than getting my utilization down. Hopefully this question makes sense…
