@Anonymous wrote:Stryder has asked the money question, namely whether there is something for which you need to use your credit score in the next month or two. For example, buying a car, buying a house. If there is nothing you need your credit score for, then there's no reason to worry about utilization. The extra scoring points you would have gotten you can get next month by mailing a check in the next week or two.
Here are a few thoughts.
Your bank is open today (on a Sunday) but in order to make your payment you'll have to drive there which will take you an hour. For some crazy reason, I want to see my score stays and hovers around 700 regardless if I need a credit or not, it's more of self gratifacation than anything really. Lots of stuff jumped out at me there. Are you sure your bank has branches that are open on Sunday? No, if I said Sunday I apologize, it's meant to be Saturday and it is open on Saturday its NFCU and they were open 'till 2PM. If so, is there a particular reason that this bank doesn't permit you to make online payments? Yes, the bank let me make a payment online, however, unfortunately after moving an hour away, there's no other branches around me that will accept a deposit for NFCU that I need to use to pay my bill. (A lot easier than an hour drive.) You mention that you'd be using cash to pay -- as in actual paper bills, like a hundred $20 bills? Yes, actual $100 bills, not a check or money order or certified check, actual Benjamins
Any reason you have that kind of cash rather than having it in your bank? I actually went out of the country and took some cash with me just because I haven't been in that country for 10 years and I thought I need as much cash as possible, I was wrong and credit card worked just fine. so when I came back I had the cash and wanted to use it to pay off the outstanding loan. And if you need access to a brick and mortar bank, why is the closest one an hour away? Because it's the best bank so far to have... so 1 hour away drive right now is not a big deal
You don't have to answer those questions, but I am just letting you know that they did jump to mind.
A more important issue is the sheer size of your CC debt. You mention that a 2k payment will decrease your total utilization from 11% to 8%. That's a 3% decrease. $2000 divided by 3 = $667 which is therefore 1% of your debt. - I dont think you calculated my UTI properly... the $2000 had my utilization at 11% which means 3% decrease from 11% is actually 28% decrease overall.. so if I owed $7,490 on a $68,000 TCL which is 11% and if I pay it down $2,000 from $7,490 that will put me to $5,490 on a credit line of $68,000 which is 8% = You said ..."That means your total CC debt is 67k." not so sure how you came up with this? even with a simple math if I have to only remove $2,000 from $67,000 that's not even close to 5% and yet my example was dropping my overall UTI from 11% to 8% by mere paying $2000. That is.... a lot. Worrying about a few FICO points should be the least of your concerns right now. Your concern (in my opinion) should be the vast extent of your indebtedness to CC companies. I truly appreciate your concern and your feedback, but I really don't think you calculated or even near correct on how to came up with how much I owed given that I said that $2,000 will drop my overall UTI by 3%..... Your top priority should be implementing a plan to pay off all of that debt. Every penny of it. Until you get all of it paid off (and also have analyzed how the debt happened in the first place) worrying about your FICO score is a bad sign, because the sole function of a good FICO score is as a tool to get people to lend you more money. You do not need to be going further into debt, but rather getting out of it. Again, thanks for the advise, but not necessary at this time, since my DTI is still 1% even though it shows that it's 8%... I can pay it down but the $4,000 I took out to buy some items that I'm able to sell and resell with no interest, I rather keep it that way for another year to make some more money of theirs...
Since you ask, however, there is no penalty associated with individual card utilization until a particular card gets quite high, e.g. 50%. As long as a card is < 49% there is likely no individual penalty associated with it. But of course any card with a balance is still contributing to your total utilization (which uses all your credit limits together). This is good to know if proven true... I'm new to UTI so any new information will surely helps!
You will also get a scoring bonus from having a lot of $0 balances on your open cards. That's a scoring factor completely apart from % utilization.
My replies to your questions in blue - thanks for your time to reply!