Whats the best way to raise my score? closing accounts ect.?

Question

Ok well im trying to find out the best way to raise my score. these are my accounts open:
My Debt:

Discover: $4300/$9500
Capital One: $260.56/$400
Chase/CC: $1297.99/$1500
Chase 2: $140.14/$200
Aspire: $158.48/$1000
Car care: $663.42/$800
Best Buy: $434.34/$1700
ABC: $600/$1500
Dell: $1467/$1500
AM EX: $0/$2000

The discover card im unsure if its helping me or not. Its in my moms name and its the earliest ive started credit. But it does say I owe alot. Do you think its helping or hurting me? Also all the low cards like capitalone and lower I was planning off just paying those 3 off in whole? Is it good to pay off in whole or smaller amounts? Or The AMEX has 0% interested for 15 months should I just switch as many as I can onto that card and make payments on that?

Also once I pay off should I close some or leave them open? Which ones would you close after paid off and which ones would you not?

Answer 1

I agree with the posters that said closing accounts can hurt your scores.
I disagree with the posters that say available credit is debt.
Available credit does not equal debt, plain and simple.
It is rare, but every once in a blue moon an (uninformed) lender may say that you have to much credit. BUT, if you keep your cards and loans in good standing, with on time payments, low utilization, no over limits, etc. - your scores should be rise pretty high - and you could tell that lender to stuff it because there would be many prime lenders waiting in the wings for your business.

Having a good mix of store cards along with your credit cards IS beneficial. While store cards do not count as high in actual scoring compared to major cards, they give you a more rounded credit profile.

You have some great cards, though the balances on many are high compared to the credit limits.

As for the Discover, that is a toughie. You said it is your earliest card and it also has the highest credit limit. Though the balance is fairly high.
If a high balance is the norm on that card, you might think about being removed "at some point in the future". If a high balance is just an occasional thing, keep it.
Since it is your earliest card, even though you are only an AU, and it has the highest credit limit - it would definately hurt you at this point to be removed.

Keep your Chase cards, the AmEx - they are prime companies.
Keep your store cards. They are all good cards and as long as you pay in full, you won't be paying the high interest that they require. Hopefully on your Car Care, you are using one of the 0% for X month promo's.

As for Aspire, even though you have a fairly good credit limit on it - it's super subprime and I would say to get rid of it.

Cap One is a subprime and does not report your credit limit, only the high balance. If you have already used up to close to your credit limit, they are probably reporting that so it probably is not hurting you in that regard.
If they have a fee attached to it - next time it is due, call and request that they waive the fee and reduce your interest rate.
If they refuse to waive the fee and/or reduce your interest, you might "think" about closing it. If you don't care if it's remains open, you could always tell them that if they refuse to waive your fee and/or reduce your interest rate, you will close the card.
They may waive the fee, they may reduce your interest rate, they may say no to both requests and continue charging the fee and leave the interest where it's at OR they may say no and close your account. It's a risk to threaten to close the card, but with Cap One, you wouldn't be missing much.

Try to pay off, or pay down below 30%, all of the cards you don't have a 0% promo with. If you don't have a 0% with any store cards, try to pay them off completely.
It does not hurt your credit to pay a card in full.

With the cards you have a 0% promo with, try to get them down below 50% (ideally below 30%)

Since your AmEx has a 0% interest promo, check to see how much their balance transfer fees are. If they are reasonable, or have none, transfer some of your balances over to it.
Which one(s) you transfer would depend on how much interest you are paying - if you do not have a 0% promo and you are paying a high interest on Dell, you might transfer all or most of the balance.
Just be sure about the balance transfer fee, if the fee would be high and you would probably have the Dell account paid off within several months, it may not be worth it to transfer - ALWAYS crunch your numbers before doing a balance transfer.

Then, contact all of them and request a NO HARD PULL credit limit increase. Try to get AmEx to raise your credit limit "before" you balance transfer anything to it.
And also call and request that they lower your interest rate.

Answer 2

wow, that is a lot of cards. I don't know if it is wise to have that many cards. At some point it will become hard to manage and if for some reason you cannot make a payment then you will have to content with all the money collectors as opposed to 1.

To build credit what you need to do is 1)borrow money. 2) pay on time. Also, you need to borrow plenty of money. For example, is not the same buying a $400 dollars items than a car. Any joe schmoe can come up with $400 or pay the $400 in some small amount every month. A car is different. Its a big constant payment each month. There fore buying an expensive but NECCESARY item gives you more credit that a bunch of little items because it proves you are a reliable person.

If you pay the cards off you will not get punish. Card companies prefer that you don't pay them off because then they can leach you for money. When you don't pay off completely then interest comes into play. Some companies also have service charges. For example if your minimum monthly payment is $20 and thats all you apy in the end you will actually pay more. There might be a $5 dollar service charge and maybe 1 dollar interest charge. So, intead of $20 you end up paying $26. Now do that for a year and you end up paying $312 when you should had only paid $240. So, yeah, if you can pay them off the better.

Assuming that all the cards have the same interest or close enough to ech other, I would pay off the small bills first. So, pay off if you can Chase2, Aspire and Capital one in that order. Remember you will also be paying at least the minimun on the other cards. The idea here is to make big payments on at least one card to get rid of it. For example, lets say that the maximum you can afford to pay at once is $150 plus the minum for the other cards. So, you pay off Chase 2 which is under $150 this month. Because you gave a minimum payment for Aspire next othn it should be in your $150 range. So next month you pay off Aspire. By this time Capital one should be lower. Probaly not in the $150 range but close enough so, pay that one off next. It may take you 1 and a half payments to do so but its worth while. Note that while you are doing this the other cards are leaching your money. Anyways, by the time you pay off Capital ONE you will be close to finishing off Best buy and then Car care. Here is an interesting point to consider. If you have two cards that owe close to the same amount then pay the one that has the highest interest first.

All that I said assumes that you can pay off cards comfortably. Don't over excert yourself. However, it is very very VERY important to get rid of all those bills. They will come back to bite your butt soon thrust me. You may not see a problem now but lady luck has a way of backstabing people. Your car may brake down or there is a family emergency or what not and you need to be able to come up with some money and still be able to afford living. So, spend your money wisely or you will opay the price dearly.

On choosing a credict card. You do not need these many cards. The maximum you need is 3. Use the credit card with the lowest interest for all your CREDIT CARD purchases. I say credit card because if you can pay cash do so. It depends of what you are buying though. I rather take a $1000 dollar item on credit and have money on my pocket. On the other hand a $100 item is best paid cash. There is no good reason why I should be giving my hard earn money away to some multi million dollar company that could give two s h i ts about you.

Answer 3

Wow, that's definitely a lot of debt, but still nothing that can't be solved! Before I continue, can you give me the interest rate on each of the cards...that will help in determining which ones to pay off first.

Answers to your questions:
- having this many cards is certainly hurting you, especially from a banks perspective. More cards = more debts = high risk
- To pay off in whole or smaller amounts, again we must look at the interest rates
- For AMEX, call and ask what the interest rate is after 15 months.

Well, e-mail me if you need any help, be glad to in any way possible. Have some other suggestions too.

Answer 4

Be careful when taking advice on raising your credit score from a non-professional. There is already a lot of misinformation here and I am sure more will follow. If you really want to increase your credit score, all of the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) offer products which can help you watch and improve your credit score. I do know that closing accounts does not help and in fact will lower your score. The scoring takes into account your ratio of open credit to amounts due so closing accounts is not helpful. The most helpful thing is to pay off as much of your outstanding balance as possible. Visit www.equifax.com for more info on scoring tools.

Answer 5

The card with your moms name is only hurting you if you are named on the card or have signature authority on the card otherwise it does not show up on your credit report.

Figure out the amount of money you can comfortably devote to paying off these bills and then set a goal of getting them paid in a pattern suggested before.

Pay the minimums to all the cards except the smallest one and give them the balance of your bill paying budget untill they are paid in full. then move to the next lowest balance and repeat the process.

If you can consolidate by getting one loan to pay off the entire balance of these credit cards that would be preferable as you could give them the entire allotment and pay that loan off quickly and it would have the added benifit of giving you a large borrowed amount to make the banks comfortable with loaning you a large amout again.

Consider closing all but the few revolving general types of cards such as Cap one and Chase. The specific store cards are just a ruse to get you to spend more in a particular store than you would if you had to rely on cash such as Best Buy and Dell. If you could use your Chase card for that then why use another card instead. You will owe the money either way.

There are two schools of thought on the open vs closed.

One is that if you have the dicipline to have available credit but not use it you are a better credit risk as you can manage your money.

The other is if you have this available it will always be possible to charge yourself to the limits and that will restrict your borrowing ability.

Talk to a banker or loan officer at your credit union and they can paint you a better picture for your individual circumstance.

Also to stop getting those offers for low interest credit cards that we all get daily in the mail you can visit

www.optoutprescreen.com

This website will allow you to opt out of receiving the offers in the mail as well as request that the big 3 credit bureau's do not allow your info to be sold to those solicitors for a period of 5 years.

This can increase your credit score by as much as 30 points in two weeks. I've done this and it does work as well as cutting down on the junk mail I get.

Good Luck

Answer 6

Looks like you are maxed out in credit. If you are paying on time, then that is a good thing. But I would concentrate on getting your balances to less than 40% of the balance and if you can pay off some of those high interest rate credit cards then close the account.

It is good to have good credit, but it can also be a bad thing to have too much credit.

Answer 7

Payoff what you can and close them.Reports will show that you are stressed out.