I owe $30,000 in revolving credit, will my credit score improve if I pay in full or in increments?

Answer 1

At this point, the more you pay off, the better your score will be. The faster you pay it down, the faster it will go up.

Get your Total debt, then individual cards down by the following chunks of your total available revolving credit.

50%
33%
25%
10%
0%

So, it helps your score more if all your cards are under 50% of the limit. One card maxed can drop your score a lot.

Answer 2

If you have the money to pay it in full, why would you keep paying interest on it. Don't worry about minimal changes in your credit score. Pay the stupid thing off. The only reason you need a credit score is to get into more debt, which is okay if it's a reasonable mortgage for a house. There are lenders who will manually approve your loan rather than using your fico score. I believe Churchill Mortgage is one of those but there are many others.

Answer 3

Credit score aside if you pay it in a lump sum then you are saving yourself a whack of interest. I would think unless you owed that much and it was in the form of a mortgage than that's a lot of debt and paying it in full or in increments should make no difference in a credit score as long as you were paying it.

Answer 4

Actually, the credit score could care less if any one card is maxed out (as long as it's not over the limit), rather the aggregate sum of all balances divided by the aggregate sum of all credit lines.

Below 50% is one benchmark, another is at 25%, another at 15%, and the final one at 5%. If you are over 50% balance to available credit - it matters not where you are.

When I say below, you must be at least $5.00 below the % mark set above - or you risk being over when you least expect it.

How do I know - I explicitly tested this over a period of 5 months - varying my reported balances, and comparing what the score did.

Answer 5

Pay it off in full. Your credit score will shoot up, and the interest you're paying will shoot down. The money you save in interest can be put in a money market each month, and before you know it, you'll be able to pay for Michael Jackson's attorney in cash.

Answer 6

I'm not really sure about that part. But, I did learn a valuable lesson with collection agencies. Don't pay them take it directly to the places you owe. If you pay the collectors the crap will never come off your credit.

Answer 7

Pay it off, if possible. Keep the interest rather than give it to the credit card companies.

Answer 8

as long as your accts remain in good standings, yes... the faster you pay them off ...the quicker your score will reap the benefits.