Quick question on how to effect score

[Anonymous]

Hey there, I am in the process of buying a home. Between the time I received the pre-approval for the home loan and when we actually got the ball rolling, there was some additional debt on my credit report due to a death in the family. Now it looks like I am 4 points away from qualifying for the loan I wanted. Looking at it, it seems 4 points shouldn't be hard to make up in a short period of time and was curious what the best coarse of action would be to try and make those 4 points up in a month or so, maybe a little longer.

[MidnightVoice]

Utilization is usually the best way to do it.  If you pay off all of your balances before the CCC sends the statement, it will reduce utilization to close to zero.  But it can take several weeks to get all the balances to actually REPORT as zero

[Anonymous]

For 4 points any guesses as to if I need to pay it all off or just or just get the different credit lines that are over 50% to under 50% of the total credit limit?

[Anonymous]

Even if you can only reduce your utilization from, say 60% to 35%, do it. You will achieve some scoring benefit, not to mention it's that much less of a balance or balances you're being charged interest on.

[Anonymous]

That makes sense. After reading through here quite a bit I am starting to understand a lot more. Thanks for all the advice so far, and just one more quick question. I currently have 11 charge cards (mixture of Major CC, Dept. store and a gas card) as well as an auto loan and personal loan. If I wanted to maximize my score I know I should pay most of them off all together and keep a few with balances 9% or under. How many should I carry balances on? I read that it was less than half so would 3-4 work or should I go for less?

[Anonymous]

Not sure there's a magic number of cards - but my personal experience is that with my 8 cards, I let 3 of them carry small (1-3%) balance each month. If I had 11 cards, I'd experiment with letting 4 of them carry a small balance each month.  

[Anonymous]

If you can swing it - the best is usually to let only 1 card report a balance under 3% (not for everyone but for the vast majority of people on these forums). If you can't swing that, bring less than half of your REVOLVING accounts (credit cards, store cards, charge cards) to a 0 balance. IE if you have 8 cards have 3 or less report.

[marty56]

I do best with 1 card reporting any balance at or bellow 9%.  I saw no difference between 1% or 9% so if the budget is tight, 9% would be okay.  I have seen mixed results in letting 2 cards report a small balance so I try not to let that happen.  I have lost points for 0% util.

[jim5518]

Paying down your balances will help a lot.I had 66% on mine and at 55% gained 12 points.This month at 44% I got 14 more so it really helps.

[Anonymous]

Ok, back for one more. If I were to only be able to pay off around 50% of my total debt, I know revolving accounts would be better to pay down than installment loans, but would it be better to zero out as many accounts as possible or pay all of them down? Currently I have 11 CCs that are carrying balances.