I’ve been financially irresponsible with credit cards for years. I have 15k in debt.

Glad you're making changes! Good luck buddy!!!

Paying them down to 0 won’t keep them from staying open. You should be completely paying off CC debt monthly at a minimum. I do it once a week to make sure I never forget and carry a balance.

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My utilization is 70%. I know this is terrible, and I don’t need any comments about it, because I’m doing something about it now. I know I’ve been stupid, I’m just curious how much I can improve my score.

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Your score should improve a good bit if you can get the average utilization under 40%. Obviously the goal would be to pay them off but I think you'll start seeing credit score improvement around there.

I been there. The funny thing is I'm a pretty responsible guy.

I'm currently at $0. At one time I had over $20K in CC debt.

Nobody will tell you this here and it won't be popular, but closing an account after paying it off can be helpful if you're compulsive. It also gives you a sense of satisfaction. It won't hurt your score as much as some say.

I closed all my Chase accounts and it hasn't made a dent.

It takes time. You can pull through.

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Nobody will tell you this here and it won't be popular, but closing an account after paying it off can be helpful if you're compulsive. It also gives you a sense of satisfaction. It won't hurt your score as much as some say.

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Correct.

On the flip side, if you're disciplined you can try to consolidate. That's what I did. I didn't run the originals back up and I peaked at 853 when I was close to the finish line.

Individual psychology is a yuuuuuuge factor.

Just cut them up. That way the companies won’t be able to track you anymore


If they can’t find you they can’t make you pay

Could be much worse. Google “debt, debt, debt Tigerdroppings”.

Reading a few pages of that thread will surely set you on the straight and narrow.

I’ve bumped it to many times to link again

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I’m just curious how much I can improve my score.

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Your score will slowly tick up as you decrease utilization. Usually there are benchmarks where there are big increases. but should creep up a bit with each reduction.

The real joy is when you do the math on all the interest you're paying and see that number shrink over time. I've been where you're at, and realized that at my high point I was probably paying $400 a month in CC interest. Cleared it all up and wow what a delight.

Have you looked at a credit card consolidation loan? You can use that to wipe out all the debt and bring it under one payment, boosting your score and probably reducing your interest costs. With your relatively high score you must not have any real dings, so should have a shot at approval.

No troll. The guy had a guitar problem, a watch problem, and a hanging out at bars after work problem.

On top of that, he and his wife loved weekend getaways.

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we pay our cards off multiple times a month.

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What is the purpose of this? We use CC for most purchase due to the benefits and protection but simply pay the balance each month, never paid interest.