Will paying off half of my credit cards improve my credit score?
April 11th, 2010 by admin
How much will my credit score increase if I were to pay off 50% of my credit cards within a 2 month time frame? My current credit score is 568 and I’m hoping to increase it to 700 
I’m planning on getting a car by the summer and I want a great credit score…
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To go from 558 to 700 will take several months of good hard credit management.
Pay your credit cards down to under 30% of your limit and keep them there.
Use them for every day things, never exceed 30% of your limit and always pay in full before the due date.
I did this with 2 credit cards and raised my score over 150-points in 12-months.
It takes time with credit, your better of having a little balace and paying it off little by little, than to pay it all off at once!
Your credit score will definately go up, but it’s hard to tell by how much. depends on other factors like how long you’ve had your credit cards, any delinquent accounts, total debt etc. But making a large decrease in debt like you’ve described will actually boost your score quickly.
Getting out of debt will boost those points associated with ability to pay, but getting a "great score" requires a great history, which takes time. If a quick fix were possible, everyone would do it and credit scores would be worthless.
Remember: creditors don’t report when you pay; they report once a month, usually at statement time.
35% of your score is your reputation for on time payments. Your score will slowly start to rise after about 6 months of paying on time ALL the time.
As you can see from the previous answers, nobody can predict exactly. However, I do think some of these other answers are too conservative and are based on the "conventional wisdom" rather than personal experience.
I recently had a big increase in my score by doing what you are talking about – dramatically improving my debt to credit ratio (the "amount oed" part of your scredit score – how much you owe as a % of how much total credit is available to you).
I went from low 600′s to low 700′s in 2 months.
My biggest concern for you is that your score of 568 is a bit low. If it is low because of some late payments it will take you longer to establish a good score. Your payment history accounts for 35% of your score and is the biggest factor. Your amount owed is 30% of the score – it is the second biggest component and as you can see while still significant it is not as important as payment history.
A good idea wold be to get hold of your credit report (you can get a free copy once a year) and make sure your low score is not due to any mistaken entries you can get cleaned up.