Credit Score stuck at 680

[Brickbybrick]

Good morning friends!

  I have reached my highest credit score by reading posts on this forum. Thank you for that. I have paid off close to 7,000 in credit card debt. I now have $1,000 on my Chase Slate as part of a 0% BT offer.

   I have been stuck at 680 for months. I've been desperately trying to crack 700 for my very first time in adult life. I paid off my auto loan so once that loan dropped off I lost points. 

   I am wondering if I should open a new credit card? I asked Capital One for a credit limit increase to no avail. My total credit limit is a measly $7,600. 

    Please advise on how to increase my score. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Your points should come back slowly from paying the loan off. A HP will drop it a couple of points. DO you have other cards other than the ones mentioned below? 

[dragontears]

---

@Brickbybrick wrote:

Good morning friends!

  I have reached my highest credit score by reading posts on this forum. Thank you for that. I have paid off close to 7,000 in credit card debt. I now have $1,000 on my Chase Slate as part of a 0% BT offer.

   I have been stuck at 680 for months. I've been desperately trying to crack 700 for my very first time in adult life. I paid off my auto loan so once that loan dropped off I lost points. 

   I am wondering if I should open a new credit card? I asked Capital One for a credit limit increase to no avail. My total credit limit is a measly $7,600. 

    Please advise on how to increase my score. Thank you!

---

What negative information do you have on your reports? If your signature is up-to-date you already have 5 cards so getting another will not immediately increase your scores 

[Anonymous]

The Chase Slate OP referenced in the beginning is not listed in his cards, so I'm wondering if there are others as well.  Adding additional cards at this time is not a recipe for improving your score.  Also total credit limits are not a Fico scoring factor.  Someone with $7k in total credit limits can achieve the same Fico scores as someone with $70k or even $700k.  My advice would be to not open any new accounts.

You said you have a $1000 balance on the Chase Slate.  What is the credit limit of that card?  If you're sitting at high utilization on it, that may be impacting your scores significantly in a negative way.  Do you have balances on all of your other cards too, or are they at $0? 

The only thing you can really do to break free of the score range you're in currently is to remove negative items from your credit report.  I would suggest targeting the most severe and most recent first and work from there. 

[Anonymous]

With a $1000 balance on a total of $7600 in credit, you're carrying a hair over 13% utilization. If you pay that down to $608 you'd be at 8%, which is in the ideal range (under 9% aggregate usage), and that would give you a boost of probably 10-15 points.

[Brickbybrick]

I'm so sorry folks! I had my email notifications turned off. These are the only cards I have. I will work to get my uti down to 8% and I hope I hit 700

Chase Slate 1000/2000

Chase Freedom 0/2500

Cap1 QS 0/1100

Amex 0/1000

Jcrew 0/250

Bluenile 0/800

I will pull down my latest credit report, I had a late payment on my jcrew when I lost my job few years ago. 

[Anonymous]

If that late payment is the only negative item on your credit report, removing it would result in a significant score gain... easily putting you above a 700 score.  I would suggest working to get it removed since it sounds like it's got a while before it goes away on its own, which is typically around 7 years.

[Brickbybrick]

Goodness me, 7 years... I tried a GW to no avail. I'll work my credit down to 8% UTI and go from there. Thank you all!

[Anonymous]

How many times have you tried for GW?

I've had accounts that I've had to request GW on 20+ times before finding success.  If you haven't heard "no" that many times or more yet, IMO you haven't asked enough

[KJinNC]

There is a tried and true method for GWD. The basics are, 1) find every named individual at the company who could possibly remove the derog or tell somebody to remove it, 2) mail them a one-page letter pleading your case with politeness and humility, with your account info on that sheet of paper, 3) mail a set of these letters out on Monday in hand-addressed envelopes, 4) mail another set out on Thursday in hand-addressed envelopes, 5) repeat until the derog is gone.

It doesn't matter if 20 people say no or toss your letter without reading it. You just need one person to agree with you or take your side.

Beyond that, you lost points when your car loan was paid off because you now have just one type of account, or I guess two kinds (bank cards and store cards). A car loan is a secured installment loan. Because you no longer have a secured installment loan, you lose points. You can get those points back by opening a Self loan or equivalent, which emulates a car loan in terms of credit. The idea is that you "borrow" money, say $500. They deposit it for you into an interest-bearing account. You pay a higher interest rate for the loan, so overall, this will cost you a little money. When the loan matures, you get the money you "borrowed" out of the account. Depending on exact interest rates, it'll probably end up costing you $40-$60 or something like that. You are essentially buying a positive tradeline. Of course, you could also just get another car loan, if you need a car, I just mention the other option in case you want a lower-stakes way to get the credit benefit.

If it were me, I'd probably close the store cards (in the case of J Crew, AFTER the GW deletion). That won't help your scores, or hurt them, they just seem too small to mess with. JMO. You should definitely keep the Chase and Amex cards. I'm not that into Capital One, personally, but may as well also keep that one.

If you have not applied for a CLI on your Amex recently, you may as well do that. To get your utilization down, there are two sides of the equation, you can reduce balances, or you can increase available credit. A CLI would address the second part of the equation. I don't have Chase or Cap1 cards so I'm not sure how CLIs work with them, but if you can do that without hard pulls, I'd also try with them.

All JMO. Good luck!