Credit Questions What WIll help my FISCO Score?

I have 3 credit cards 2 are active and one i have canceled. The canceled one has a reate of 8% ish with about $3,500 on it. One has a 10% rate with like $6000 on it and one has 12% with $4,000 on it. I want to get every thing under control. Do you think if i went to a bank and rolled it all into one loan with one payement and paid off my cards and still kept them open (to help my credit score) and never used them will this help my credit or keep it about the same?

Public Comments

1. If I were you, I would take the balances on all of those cards and pull out a loan from your bank to pay them off. You will be able to get them paid off much faster as a loan than credit cards. And your credit score goes up when you pay off a loan.
2. That is exactly what you should do. I'd consolidate them into one card, preferably with a 0% interest rate on balance trasfers and keep the others open with zeero balances..
3. Any time your debt to credit ratio exceeds 30% your score takes a major hit. If you can not afford to pay your credit cards down to below 30% of your limits without a loan, then by all means see if you can get one from your local bank. The addition of a installment loan and the lowering of your credit card debt to $0 will both help your credit score as long as you make your payments as agreed and do not exceed 30% of your limit on your cards again. It's F.I.C.O. by the way.
4. What you are doing is consolidating your payments. It may be easier for you financially, but it does not enhance your FICO score. Apparently, the optimal scenario would be to have no more than 20% balance on each of your card: eg. if you have a credit limit of 5,000 on a card, have no more than $1000 balance on it. Consolidating a payment is much easier, but your score would slowly improve as you make payments on the balance.
5. It's going to help you, but not immediately. You maxxed out your cards and when you do this your credit takes a big punch and your score drops. It will come back up as you pay off the balances you owe and if you can get a loan to pay it back at an interest rate better than you have now, do so. You must get control over this and put your cards away in a safe place and forget about them until you pay this off! Go to my website and read it all because it is about credit repair and what I had to go through after ID theft and bankruptcy and I still got my score up from 486 to 730 in a little over a year! You will benefit from the "how credit scoring works" section in particular too. I know about this now more than i ever did after what I went through and once you figure out how credit and credit scoring really works, I'm willing to bet you will be more careful with your credit cards!