@Anonymous wrote:Thank you! I have generous parents who agreed to pay them off for me with a lenient pay back plan to them. Would it be better to close the paid off accounts (2 Discover cards, Chase, Dress Barn) or lower the limits? How soon can I expect a change to my current credit score of 701?
no no no no no no no no no no no no no
+1 to MVV's advice.
You now have credit established in your name, and no current debt. Use them as if they were debit cards --in other words, don't think of using them as "charging"; just use them for convenience and rewards ONLY if you have the cash in the bank to pay them off as soon as the balances post. Don't even wait for a statement.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
You didn't say how the cards got run up, so I hope it's OK if I write the following. It's for anyone who hasn't learned to be the master of their credit:
If you are genuinely concerned about not being able to control yourself with credit (and it takes an honest person to realize this and admit it), give all but one of your cards to your parents and practice using that one responsibly. Make it a bank card (Visa, MC, etc) rather than a store card like Dress Barn. Pick one thing, and only one thing, that you have to buy anyway --gasoline, groceries, prescriptions --and use it only for that one purpose.
***Leave the card in your desk drawer at home except when you are specifically going to the gas station, grocery store, drugstore, whichever site you're using the card for. Don't let yourself be tempted by having it handy.***
Check your online account for that card every week (every Friday, every Sunday, whatever), and pay off any balance showing at that time from your online checking account. This will get you in the habit of only using plastic for what you need anyway, and it will also help develop the habit of having money available in your checking account for life's little surprises.
Use that one card exclusively for this one purpose for a month. Then swap it out for a different bank card and keep doing the same thing for the same purpose for another month. (You don't want the cards to be closed for inactivity.)
After two or three months, if you have gotten control of your credit usage, add another shopping category, one of the have-to-buy categories, and start using the CC for that as well. Give it another two or three months, while paying off your cards every single week.
If you got in CC trouble for buying a certain category of things --clothes, electronics, restaurant meals, etc. --don't use plastic for those things for a good long while. I'd suggest a year. It's amazing how long it takes to break habits, and excessive credit use often has an emotional overlay as well, aka "retail therapy."
Although it's certainly possible to live off the credit grid, and for some folks, it's unfortunately necessary, most of us do need to have access to credit at some point. Buying a home is an obvious example, and another is reserving hotel rooms and rental cars. More and more employers are pulling credit reports, and so are insurance companies. It's worth the struggle to gain mastery over credit and use it as the useful tool that it can be.
Anyway, sorry for any preaching. My mom self is pretty close to the surface today! 
Good luck.
@Anonymous wrote:
...Can you tell me how long it might take now that my balances are paid off, to have my credit score be adjusted? Thanks!
Check my other reply to your original post. 
Credit scores don't exist until someone pulls the underlying reports. Whatever is on your reports at that very moment will generate the new scores when you pull.
So if you allow everything to report to the credit bureaus per the timetable described, and then for the credit bureaus to enter the new $0 balances on each account (on their own mysterious timetables), and then you pull your score reports, you will see the new improved scores.