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A HELOC is revolving credit, and is (normally) included under your revolving % util.
If the percent util is high, it could affect your % util scoring, whereas if scored as a loan, it would not.
I say "normally" because FICO does treat a HELOC of approx $35K or above as an installment account, and thus does not include it in your revolving % util.
So it kinda depends upon how big your HELOC is, and how long before you intend to get the util down......
@RobertEG wrote:A HELOC is revolving credit, and is (normally) included under your revolving % util.
If the percent util is high, it could affect your % util scoring, whereas if scored as a loan, it would not.
I say "normally" because FICO does treat a HELOC of approx $35K or above as an installment account, and thus does not include it in your revolving % util.
So it kinda depends upon how big your HELOC is, and how long before you intend to get the util down......
Thanks Robert - my HELOC is $64k. I have used approx $15k so far but was wondering if my scores would benefit more if I got a personal loan to pay off some CC balances or use HELOC....
Do the calcualtion of your % util with and without the HELOC, and that will tell you if it is being included in your % util.
Installment loans do not have a % util, they have a % current balance of original loan amount. While that is a factor in scoring, it has a very small weighting compared to % util of revolving credit. Thus, removing a high % util from your revolving scoring and shifting the balance over to installment scoring will result in a lowered % util with the resulting scoring under installment being negligible.