I have several credit cards and right now all of my cards are maxed out. I have some money to pay some of the debt off and as I'm looking to get a mortgage in the near future I want to do this in a way that would best improve my credit score. I had been planning to pay off the higher rate cards and leave the lower rate ones as is, but in reading some of the recent posts I'm wonding if this would be the best plan. Assuming the total debt and credit limits would be the same, would it be better to have some cards paid off and some maxed out or would it be best for all the cards to be at 50 or 60%? Thanks, Brett
I'm curious about this too. Although the ideal is to not be maxed out, it does happen. When I played around on the EQ simulator, score would be highest at 50% or below, and would be about 20-30 points less if all debts were paid off. I plugged in ranges from 15 to 50% and they all came up with the same range. How accurate this is is a toss up I know. I thought I'd read somewhere that it's better to not have balances on ALL of your cards. That lenders may want to see that you don't have something on everything? Anyone know for sure? Also, your total debt still has to fall under certain percentages depending on the program you go with. Newstdt
