I'm talking with a mortgage broker about re-financing, and she advised me that the ideal situation from the credit bureau's point of view was to get down to three credit cards with balances of under 30% on each one (and pay off the rest and close them). So I got to that point, and then I unexpectedly had some extra money available, so I used it to pay down two of the three remaining cards, and emailed her the good news. She emailed me back and said, actually, I shouldn't have done that -- they don't like to see zero-balance cards that are still open, so I needed to put some balance *back* onto those cards so that they were carrying a balance of less than 30% of the credit limit, but still significantly greater than zero!

So I went ahead and did it, getting a balance transfer from each of those cards to get some money that I could just hold onto in my checking account, and then once the refinance is over, I'll pay the cards back. I hope that was good advice, even as counterintuitive as it is. Just keep in mind that there are situations -- or at least some mortgage brokers will tell you there are situations -- where it actually helps you to have more debt, as long as it's not out of control.

I knew you could gain an advantage by having a credit history -- i.e. havingn accumulated some debt in the past and *paid it off* -- but I had no idea you would get extra points for having extra debt that you hadn't paid off yet.