Comment from Millions
Time July 29, 2009 at 4:43 am

Ah well it wont happen overnight but it doesn’t take long for short term changes like account balances, payments, and available credit to show up on your credit report and effect your score — likely these are the things to have impact over the short term, and you have a better change of fixing your score if you try to address one of those issues, which you can do easily in a matter of weeks.
Credit cards usually report once a month every month, so if you balance changes it might show up within as short as 30 days. However I would caution that 680 to 550 is a huge drop and there may be other things affecting your score.
When you’re trying to build a solid credit score it’s important to get a comprehensive view of what is actually effecting it…
Your Credit Score (also known as your MyFico score) is calculated with the following breakdown:
* 35% -> History of Payments
* 30% -> Debt to Credit Ratio (available credit)
* 15% -> Credit History (length of open accounts)
* 10% -> New Credit (are you expanding your credit)
* 10% -> Credit Types in Use (varied credit types from loans to credit cards)
If you excel in one area and lack in another, only fixing the areas which you lack are going to improve your score.
Here are my 10 steps you can use to build your credit score quickly. I raised mine to well over 700 points fro 500 using these steps in less than a year:
1. Know and Track Your Credit Score (be sure to sign up for the free trial of your credit score monitoring listed below. It really helped my get my score up.)
2. Never Miss a Payment, Starting Today
3. Never use more than 20% of your Available Credit
4. Keep Credit Cards that Have No Annual Fees Open For as Long as Possible
5. Extend Your Credit Limit on Cards You Already Have before You Get New Ones
6. Get Credit Cards that Have CashBack Rewards to Contribute to your Balance
7. Transfer Your Balance to a Credit Card with a Lower Interest Rate and a Higher Available Credit-
8. If You Think You Are Going to be FORCED to Pay a Bill Late Ask for an Extension or Payment Plan
9. Take out a Small Personal Loan and Repay it Over a Year
10. Ask Someone With Good Credit if They will Account Shadow you
You can read more about these tips on my blog: How Can I Increase My Credit Score
* http://millionster.com/articles/debt/inc…
I hope this has helped! ^_^ Good luck with your score!

Comment from 1gorgeou
Time July 29, 2009 at 9:06 am

Don’t pay them completely off just pay them down to 10% and keep making payments on time.
A financial coach told my husband and I that we needed to keep our credit card accounts open and always carry a balance of 10% or less. Apparently it helps your credit more than if you would pay them off.
Good luck!

Comment from jlf
Time July 29, 2009 at 11:45 am

Allow 60 days for the lenders to “report” to the bureaus.

Comment from Beachbum
Time July 29, 2009 at 12:24 pm

STOP!!!! Don’t pay them off. Just pay them down to 20-30%of your high credit limit. Your score will be affected adversely by paying them off. You fico can only increase with payments (on time, of course) not by not making any payment due to no balance.
30% = Capacity (Capacity is king)!!! If you have excellent history wiht these companies, then you can ask them to bump your limit just enough so that your current balance is within the 30% (preferably lower to allow for unexpected expenses) range of new limit.

Comment from Don K
Time July 29, 2009 at 5:23 pm

Most cards report monthly, so I would give it 30 days after they receive your payment.