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I know it's kinda personal - but if you listed your accounts, their balances and their limits - you'd get really personalized feedback from pro's that have been here a long time. Just a thought.
Thanks for the suggestion - below are my debts - I did not list the two accounts that I paid off in July. I know I have a lot of high util. but I paid down a few in July below half as my loan officer said to do - but that didn't help either. If I had the money - I'd pay them all off!!! What should I concentrate on next? Pay the low debt off first I would think. Again, no late payments ever and no collections. I left in the dates I opened them in case that matters. I did not have much debt as you can see prior to 09 when I purchased my home and opened a few accounts to add on to the house and for renovations.
Jcp 7/2000 $2,973 Limit $6000
Care/Gemb 3/2008 $2,840 Limit $3000
Gemb/Lowes 10/2009 $2,736 Limit $6000
Gemb/Sele 11/2007 $730 Limit $3000
Cap One 11/2003 $4,929 Limit $5000
Rbcbankusa 3/2011 $556 Limit $1800
Rbcbankusa 10/2009 $7,773 Limit $8000
Gemb/Lowes 8/2009 $6,890 Limit $8000
Teachers C 9/1985 $420 Limit $2000
Mortgage 7/2010 $209,790
Vehicle Loan 6/2008 $7,123
edit: Hi Nanz, I hope you don't mind, but I broke up your post a bit to make it easier to analyze. --hauling
@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for the suggestion - below are my debts - I did not list the two accounts that I paid off in July. I know I have a lot of high util. but I paid down a few in July below half as my loan officer said to do - but that didn't help either. If I had the money - I'd pay them all off!!! What should I concentrate on next? Pay the low debt off first I would think. Again, no late payments ever and no collections. I left in the dates I opened them in case that matters. I did not have much debt as you can see prior to 09 when I purchased my home and opened a few accounts to add on to the house and for renovations. Jcp 7/2000 $2,973 Limit $6000 Care/Gemb 3/2008 $2,840 Limit $3000 Gemb/Lowes 10/2009 $2,736 Limit $6000 Gemb/Sele 11/2007 $730 Limit $3000 Cap One 11/2003 $4,929 Limit $5000 Rbcbankusa 3/2011 $556 Limit $1800 Rbcbankusa 10/2009 $7,773 Limit $8000 Gemb/Lowes 8/2009 $6,890 Limit $8000 Teachers C 9/1985 $420 Limit $2000 Mortgage 7/2010 $209,790 Vehicle Loan 6/2008 $7,123
The limits don't matter, it's the utilization. Also how many accounts that have balances is factored into the utilization part of your FICO score. So if it was me, I would start with CareCredit (Anything over 80% utilization is considered maxed out by FICO - get that to below 50% at least (below 30% even better and so on.....)Cap One is also killing you.....RBCbankusa looks maxed out...... If it was my money and my debt I would work on these three first. Maybe others will chime in and have different opinions. So take what you want and leave the rest, as they say. Nail those down one at a time and I bet you will see some serious pointage by getting them away from the "maxed out" zone.
The mortgage and car is probably helping your score because it is all on time payments and mix of credit (installment vs. revolving) is good.
Thanks for the advise - I wish I had that kind of money to pay down those large balances, unfortunately I don't. But, I will keep plugging away!
Thanks again!
@Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the suggestion - below are my debts - I did not list the two accounts that I paid off in July. I know I have a lot of high util. but I paid down a few in July below half as my loan officer said to do - but that didn't help either. If I had the money - I'd pay them all off!!! What should I concentrate on next? Pay the low debt off first I would think. Again, no late payments ever and no collections. I left in the dates I opened them in case that matters. I did not have much debt as you can see prior to 09 when I purchased my home and opened a few accounts to add on to the house and for renovations.
Jcp 7/2000 $2,973 Limit $6000
Care/Gemb 3/2008 $2,840 Limit $3000
Gemb/Lowes 10/2009 $2,736 Limit $6000
Gemb/Sele 11/2007 $730 Limit $3000
Cap One 11/2003 $4,929 Limit $5000
Rbcbankusa 3/2011 $556 Limit $1800
Rbcbankusa 10/2009 $7,773 Limit $8000
Gemb/Lowes 8/2009 $6,890 Limit $8000
Teachers C 9/1985 $420 Limit $2000
Mortgage 7/2010 $209,790
Vehicle Loan 6/2008 $7,123
edit: Hi Nanz, I hope you don't mind, but I broke up your post a bit to make it easier to analyze. --hauling
I know that paydowns are tough, but start with the smallest balance, and throw everything that you have at it, while still making minimum payments on the others. Then take however much you were paying on that first one, add it to the minimum that you were paying on the next smallest, and knock that one off while keeping the first at $0. And so on. This is called "snowballing", and it's very effective.
You can also snowball by going after the highest APR first (which makes financial sense), but many people find that they need to build up some momentum with a few small victories first.
And don't worry about accelerating payments on your house and car, at least not for now. Just keep paying them in a timely fashion.
Good luck!
Is that Teachers C a CU?
What are your APRs?
I'll echo the snowballing comments earlier, in paying down either the highest APR card or the lowest balances first while making the minimum payment on the other cards.
When you dig into the 4th card though, if going for the low balance method, I'd suggest you go after care credit before lowes. The balances are pretty similar ($104 off), but the utilization on Care is almost 95% vs Lowes' 46%. If you go for higher APRs first, and you have two cards with similar APRs, you may want to either strike the higher utilization card (to help reduce the "maxed out card" counts for FICO), or the lower balance card first to help psychologically win the war on CC debt.
You can also go for a hybrid approach, where you target the Highest APR cards, but whenever you see a card hit a balance of $500 (or some other personal trigger-point, I'd recommend around 1-2 months worth of pay-down to avoid attentions being diverted too long), you switch over to paying it off completely before resuming attacking APR. It would pepper an APR attack with small paid-off victories throughout, and free up a few bucks of minimum payments here and there.