<prompt> Human: As a Realtor, I am looking forward to helping my friend buy her first home soon. She called me the other day trying to figure out why her credit score had taken a total nosedive despite her never having missed a payment on any credit accounts. Some background, her score at one point a year ago was around 720. She found out after requesting a limit increase on her oldest credit card she did it because theyve never just raised it that was declined that her current score as a 675. I made her pull her credit reports to make sure there was no identity theft going on and everything seemed clean. I had her go over her credit history with me to see if I could determine any changes that may have caused a dip. Two major things that stuck out to me as possibly damaging were 1 She purchased her wedding dress for 3k on a card with a 3800 limit, blowing her utilization way up. Possibility 2 She has a Banana Republic credit card, when she first got it it was a master card and after a year I guess they switched her to a Visa, did a balance transfer and closed the MC. I can see this changing the average age of credit history, but only by a year. I suspect it mostly lies in the utilization. I have a possible solution, but I want to make sure it is not just as damaging. She said the Banana republic card has a 3000 limit and she currently owes nothing on it. I had mentioned that maybe she could do a 1000 balance transfer over and pay off 1000 to lower the utilization to 1000 on each card out of 3800 and 3000. She had told me that someone told her not to do so because it looks bad when you have sizable debt on a retail credit card. For my own curiosity I wanted to know if that is true? She said worst case scenario, she will just pay it offdown if she has to. Reddit, what is most likely the problem, and the best possible solution?  <response>: She said worst case scenario, she will just pay it offdown if she has to. Obviously she should pay it down as soon as possible. Carrying balances on credit cards is just plain stupid. 