My fico score won't increase?

[Anonymous]

Need help to increase my score.  I have 5 credit cards and one open account for electronics.  All current and only been 30 days late once within the years it's been open.  Only negative I have in collection is my hospital bills that I'm paying off little by little.  Trying to figure how or why my CS is not increasing . One of my CC is alittle high on balance.  I have seen on here where people talk about paying there credit-card off once they make a purchase, I was told to make payments instead of paying off my cc to show a payment history . Any advise will help.  Thank you! 

[kshurika]

The advice to maintain balances on your credit cards to pay off slowly is bad advice. Aside from The staggering APRs charged by the issuers, you need to bring your balance down ASAP to get your credit utilization under control. Figure the total amount owed on the 5 cards. Divide it by the total credit limit given to you between the five cards (larger number into smaller number). The resulting number is your credit utilization. It should be under 10% and as close to zero as you can get it, without it actually being zero. It's best to have a tiny balance (1 digit) on one card per reporting period. Another method of bringing your credit utilization percentage down is to contact your card issuers and request credit line increases (CLI). If granted on one or a few cards, the increased aggregate credit will bring down your utilization. Take care not to incur too many hard pulls, though.

You might try contacting the creditor or creditors collecting your hospital payments. See if one or all of them will report your regular payments to the credit reporting agencies with whom they contract. Possibly a long shot, but you might reach someone with both a heart and a brain. When you are near the end to paying off your debt, I suggest attempting to make a pay-for-delete deal with the creditor(s) to get your derog taken off your reports quickly.

Quit putting charges on your cards until you get that utilization down. Also, check your free annual credit reports (annualcreditreport.com). See if there is anything negative on them that doesn't belong there and get rid of it/them ASAP.

There's a start.

[Anonymous]

The only 3 things you can "do" to positively impact your Fico scores would be:

1. Get your collection removed
2. Get your 30D late removed
3. Lower your reported utilization to an ideal place

Everything else is just a waiting game... letting accounts age, don't apply for new credit until you need it, letting inquiries age away, etc.

[Anonymous]

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This help.  Thank you so much.  I didn't even know there was such a thing as pay-for-delete deal.  I will definitely ask about this.  

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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This help.  Thank you so much.  I didn't even know there was such a thing as pay-for-delete deal.  I will definitely ask about this.  

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The advice you were given by @kshurika and @Anonymous is spot on.

The advice you were given about paying a little at a time is bunk.

Pay-for-deletes are great; but you can't always get them. Whether you can get them or not, you should get rid of the negatives.

[Anonymous]

Any payment shows payment history, whether it's the mninimum or PIF. So I don't know why you were told to carry a balance for this purpose.

If possible I would try to bring your highest CC balance down to under 28%, and the rest down to 9%. Doing this will have a pretty decent point increase, from my experience anyways. This will be a good start until you can pay them all off completely, and begin using AZEO method.