Helping my Mom rebuild.. Would appreciate advice from the Credit Masters :)

Question

Greetings everybody!  I am posting here to try and get some advice from people who may have been in our shoes, or from those who know a lot about credit and how it works. I am helping my mom rebuild her credit, let me provide some backstory. My mom used to have amazing credit (800+ FICO). Around 2006, my parents divorced. At that time, they had a mortgage through Chase for our old home. IIRC, the mortgage was in my mother's name with my father as secondary (my mom's amazing credit was how they got the mortgage). The court ordered that the mortgage was to become 100% of my father's responsibility, payments and all. My dad was to pay the mortgage, and my mother and I were to list the house for sale and move out. Well, to be blunt - my dad was a jack*** and was purposely 30-90 days late on multiple payments. Even though my dad was legally responsible for payments, my mom's name was attached to the mortage. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this... her amazing credit crumbled down to a 445 FICO. Yikes. My mom knew she needed to rebuild. She desperately needed a car as ours was mysteriously sabotaged... So she purchased a used 2003 Ford in early 2006. The interest rate wasn't pretty.. 24.3% through Americredit (AKA GM Financial). She knew she would get shafted until she rebuilt, so she bit the bulllet and took it. We paid that loan off 2 years or so early sometime around 2008. Around 2010 or so, we fought the credit bureaus and were able to wipe all of the late payment marks my dad did on the mortgage off of her credit reports.  We've slowly been building ever since. We were doing great. Around 2013, her FICO was around 715, with individual bureaus reporting 690-725. Here is where things started to go slightly downhill. In late 2013, my mom became severely injured. She had multiple surgeries and was taken off of work for the remainder of the year.  In October 2013, she applied for a Barclaycard Visa via Apple and was approved for $1,500. My mom wasn't getting disability or anything like that, so we started doing the worst thing possible (but our only option)... living off of CCs. Her balances got sky high... but she consolidated them into a loan through her credit union in 2014. All CCs were paid off, we only had the loan. That was paid off too that year. That spring (2014), Barclaycard gave her an automatic CLI to $3000. Capital One gave her an auto CLI to $1500. Right as she went to go back to work, some post-surgery complications popped up and the doctors have had her off work ever since. We started living off the CCs again... balances got sky high, this time no money to consolidate. I will admit, I have made some very poor decisions in using store credit accounts to buy things. I never should have used them. We asked Barclay for a CLI a few months ago. They bumped us to $5300. Capital One gave us an automatic CLI to $2500. Here are our current stats: Barclaycard (opened 10/2013): Credit limit of $5300 - balance of $5100.Capital One (opened 11/2002): Credit limit of $2500 - balance of $1900Best Buy Store (opened approx. 2011): Credit limit of $1500 - balance of $2050 (over limit)Dell (opened December 2014): Credit limit of $1500 - current balance of $990.Credit Union loan (unsecured): Was originally $3k - now at $910. Will be paid off by December. Total balances: Roughly $10,950 or so. Credit utilization: 87%6 inquiries100% ontime paymentsOldest acct. is 13 1/2 years CreditKarma reports: TU: 659 (as of 8/9)EQ: 673 (as of 8/9)EX: Unknown FICO score via Barclaycard is reported at 687. Capital One reports TransUnion as 688 via their "Credit Tracker." My mom is FINALLY getting disability (don't ask, I can best describe it as beauacracy BS - SSI was reported to be nearly 1M cases behind). She will be getting a lump sum to makeup for the past few years plus around $1.3k monthly. I am still in high school, preparing to graduate next year. However, I am working two jobs. I have $1k a month to throw in and help wrangle debt. My mom has been making typical payments of $100 to Capital One and $250-300 to Barclay, as they are higher interest. Cap. One is 12% interest, Barclay is 18.9%. She plans on paying off and closing Dell by October. It's useless at 30% APR. She is paying off her bank loan too entirely by Ocrtober as well. She will be sending her normal payments to Cap. one and Barclay, with somewhere around $100-200 to Best Buy.  I want to send $1000 to Capital One this month, that will take it to around $800. Afterwards, I want to keep sending my entire $1k/mo. to Barclay and get that paid off ASAP, as it is accrueing 18% interest. In a perfect world, all of her major CCs (Capital One + Barclay) would be both paid off or at under 25% utilization by Turkey Day. After we are paid off, we plan on either locking our cards up or shredding them and only using them via Apple Pay, as they should be for emergencies only. We want to build up a rainy day fund in a savings account that pays interest as well, so we can avoid the CCs altogether. I would like some advice on my plan to pay our cards off. I really want to get my mom out of debt. I was wanting to lease a car before winter hit us in Ohio. Her car does horrible MPG (~10 MPG). I wanted to lease a Subaru Legacy. The lease would be in her name, with me paying for it. However, that ain't going to happen until the credit utilization is WAY down (under 30% in my mind) and credit scores are 700+, as I read somewhere around here 700+ is Tier 1 for Subaru Finance (Chase). 
If the two of us can pay as much money as possible, we would hope to be able to have much lower balances by late November. I would appreciate any advice.  Looking forward to a debt-free future for my Mom and I... and staying that way (no friviolous purchases, etc.). Thanks for the help. WH

Answer 1

So pay the Best Buy down under limit.  They will likely add the over limit amount to your minimum payment.Then payoff DellThen pay off the 18%  Barclay's.Then pay off the lower rate Cap 1. You are so lucky that it's only 11K and that you have never missed any payments.  This is a situation where your mom's scores can be 760 or more when these cards are paid down under 10%.  That's great. Since "life has happened" twice with your mom with unexpected medical things, and the fact that she will be living off of a small disability benefit, she should reduce her credit cards to the bear minimum.  Maybe one Visa/MC with a 2K limit, another card with a 1K limit and a store score like Walmart. You can call and have your credit limits decreased.  But do not do this until these accounts are paid off or her scores will plunge further due to higher utilization.  Your mom is so lucky to have you.  What a great kid you are to help.  You also just got a lesson that many of us take 10 or 20 years to learn and you haven't gotten your own credit card yet.  You will likely be a credit whiz.