How much can I increase my CS over 3 months?

[Anonymous]

knowing the breakdown of limits and balances on each of your cards would help us help you. Not all paydowns have the same effects. If you have $20k to use, you could pay off two cards with $10k balances on each, or four cards with $5k balances each. In that example, paying the four $5k cards would likely be better since you'd have four more zero-balance cards instead of two more. That helps because mortgage scores love zero balance accounts.

[Anonymous]

Here's the breakdown of balances for both my wife and me. We're AU on each other's accounts except for the Discover cards. I'm working on improving both of our scores at the same time; here is currently about 30 points higher than mine, I'm assuming because she doesn't have any lates on her account, and I have the one 30D. Other than that our reports look virtually identical. 

Citi $6463/$23100 (I'm AU)

DodgeCard $3629/$12600 (She's AU)

Her Discover $2200/7900 (no AU)

My Discover $2636/$9400 (no AU)

BECU  $1428/$5000 (Co-acct)

Her BofA $3562/$12700 (I'm AU)

My BofA $1170/$4200 (She's AU)

My plan was to keep all of them under 28%, and pay them off from smallest to biggest balance until I refi, and then after the refi pay off the highest interest forst. 

[Anonymous]

Appreciate you sharing this thread. I read through almost the whole thing and sent off a bunch of letters today to Capital One to try and get that one 30D off my CR. It sounds like a pretty smart approach!

[Anonymous]

How much approximately will you have available to pay against these balances in the next couple months? That will help us help you decide what to pay against which accounts to boost your scores the most.

[Anonymous]

Glad you went ahead with that.  Hopefully you find success.  If not, try another round or two, as it sounds like you've got a couple of months to work with.