So long story short I got myself into trouble with debt and I payed down a ton of it, but I still have 15k in credit card debt. My credit score is about 680 and I need it to be over 700 as of about October or Nov. I have the ability to get a fairly low interest (roughly the same interest as my credit cards are at) fixed installment loan. Should I get the installment loan and pay off all the credit cards. Would that increase my score since my "major" ding is revolving credit is too high? Or should I just pay down my cards as fast as possible? Ive got 1k/month Im putting toward paying down the balances...but by Oct obviously even 1k/month doesn't put me down to 30% on the cards...
I guess the question is: would this help or hurt my credit score? Should I do it, or just pay down what I can on the cards?
I am by no means an expert here so don't take this as gospel, but I would think it would help your credit score. I'm sure everyone is different but the percentage of revolving debt to limits seems to be a huge thing. My score varies by 50-60 points depending on the percentage of used credit.
The lower utilization would definitely help your score. How much the new installment loan would lower it depends on many other factors. If you do take the loan to pay off your cards, make sure you aren't going to run them up again, or you'll be worse off than you are now.
