Bumping Score by increasing deposit on secured CC?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am in the process of getting a mortgage and if I had 8 more points I would be getting a better deal. Right now I am at 712 with Equifax and I am trying to think of ways to hit the magic 720 within the next two months.

I have 2 credit cards (secured $500, regular $1000), 2 store cards and 2 installment loans (22K, 28K) that are being reported. I have no lates, use the cards very limited and pay off in full each month. My history is pretty short. My secured CC from Capital One is my "oldest" account with 2 years this months (actually - will that change anything with the score - hitting the 24 months??).

So the only thing I could think of is to increase the deposit for my secured card to increase the credit limit. It's at 500 now so if I put down another 500 maybe will that affect my score?

Any help is appreciated! Thank you

[Croselx]

I'm not sure if an increase of $500 would bump you over 8 points, but it's worth a try. Also request CLIs for the unsecured cards if you haven't done so (only do it if they SP). The other thing is to keep util at 1-2%. As a last resort I would wait it out and go for the mortgage at a later date. If it were me I would wait it out seeing as even .25% can make a difference of a few thousands over the life of the mortgage.

[Shogun]

What's your util on those cards?  If it was to lower your util% you could see an improvement.

[Anonymous]

The original plan was to wait but then the perfect house came along... I had already made my peace with having to pay a fine to get low rates because I thought my score was a lot lower. Finding out i am so close to 720 has gotten me thinking again. Util.% is 0 - i use it but pay it off in full so $0 balance gets reported. Last month i had a balance of just over $200 in the 1k limit card - that made my score drop by 30 pts. I didn't know that that card reported before the due date.. So I am back to reported 0$ and it went up 26 points.

So even if i increase credit limit it wouldn't change utilization - so maybe it's worthless?

Do you think i will get a "reward" for reaching the 2 year barrier with my oldest account?

Thanks so much!

[Asailorshort]

Your score is sooo close and for some reason it always seems like those last few points before a major milestone are the hardest to get so I'd recommend attacking it from multiple angles. 

First, I'd go ahead and put the 500 on the secured card and request a SP CLI on the other card.  If your util is already 0%, neither of those *should* help yor score, but I wouldn't rule it out because, as we all know, FICO sometimes seems to make no sense.

Secondly, I'd suggest letting one card report a 1-3% balance and the other report $0.  I've read multiple, multiple times that that's supposed to give you a bump.

Third, this is a longshot, but if you happen to have an extra $11k lying around, you could pay off half of one of your installment loans.  Once you get bbelow 50% of the original loan amount, that's supposed to give you a bump.

Last, I know you said you had no lates, but do you have *any* baddies on your report?  If so, GW the heck out of them.

Best of luck!  You're realllllly close, so a few little tweaks and/or a couple extra months should get you there.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again for the advice - just a little update - i put an additional $200 on my secured cc. Not really sure if this was the sole trigger but my lender confirmed a 723 score yesterday. This saves me points worth $12,000 at closing! What a great christmas gift! Thanks for your help

[HiLine]

Congrats! What a nice little saving you made! I think hitting the 24 months mark helped.