I have a lot of credit cards. Will paying them all off at once effect my credit score in a negative way?
Credit Card
I recently got a bonus with my current job, and am now able to pay them off. I already have bad credit due to late or missing payments. Now all of my cards have a high interest rates. My main goal is to improve my credit score and payoff debt. I am not really sure the best way to go about it. Thanks!
Tags: Bank Cards, credit cards, Improve Credit Score, Missing Payments, Mortgages, Pay Off Debt
My credit is soo good because I DO pay them off, every month. The less you can be in debt, the better off you will be. Once you have all the cards paid off, you can go to the company and ask for a lower rate. Your rates are only high because you carry balances.
~good luck
Your credit score is a reflection of how well you use credit. Paying off your credit cards will increase your available credit, and thus may improve your score. If you’re behind on any card, paying it off will improve your score.
No it will not affect your credit in a negative way. Why people always think that they must have debt to have good credit? You must pay in full and on time your credit card bills to have good credit score.
The first 3 posters pretty much just restated the obvious, they really didn’t answer the question, so I guess that’s where I come in. I’ll not only answer your question, but I’ll give you some valuable tips to get it back up.
First, you should know what makes up your score:
1. Payment history-35%
2. Total debt owed vs. available credit-30%
3. Length of time establishing credit-15%
4. Types of credit established-10%
5. Inquiries and new accounts-10%
Ok, with all that said, #1 & #2 are what’s hurting your score the worst. After all, they make up ? of your score. So, by paying them off will help #2 by giving you much needed cushion between what you owe altogether and your available credit. #1 for that matter, is going to have to take a little more work. Once you’ve paid them all off, DO NOT close them. You affect #3 and #2 if you do. A good strategy to employ would be to treat all your cards as if you had $50 limits on them and only use $10-20 a month, no more than that. You want to show activity on the cards to start rebuilding positive payment history, but you don’t want to go into debt in the process. Also by just having balances that can be paid off with just the minimum payment, you don’t get gouged with interest. What you’re wanting to do is keep the balances very low, but still show that you’re still using and paying on time. Do this for about a year, then contact them all in order to get line increases and lower the interest rate. In addition to improving your credit score, a year’s worth of perfect payment history is the perfect leverage needed in getting the interest rates and credit line increases.
Hopefully, I will have made some sense with my answer. I wish you the best of luck, and I thank you for reading.