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Failed business and divorce kind of forced my hand to BK. Not a fan, but such is life lol. Little background, I had garbage credit from being a dumb 18year old like a lot of folks, when I met my future ex-wife (haha) she was sporting like a 730-740ish so my 530ish was dragging us down. 5-6 months of report disputing since most of my negative stuff was 5+ years old, I actually passed her and had around a 760ish. Blah blah 9 years later, failed business divorce, chap7 BK happened.
Just was discharged in early July. Preface with I am extremely familiar with min/maxing scores due to my previous stint at personal credit repair, as well as loads of reading including these forums and folks who have been through similar situations.
Few days after discharge, CreditKarma says I am a healthy 534 TU and 524 EQ.(lol) Little hope in getting one, but figured it wasn't going to hurt too much, I app for Cap1 QS, expecting a denial and that I'd have to go the secured route through NFCU. much to my surprise, boom...$1000 limit, I'm pumped so I app for a couple more low key cards, BP, Best Buy NFCU unsecured... unfortunately denied on all other fronts lol. I snag a $500 secured card with NFCU and open a 24mo/$2000 credit builder loan with a local CU. This was opened because the auto loans weren't reporting for the first 6 weeks and I wasn't sure if the local CU was going to put them back on my file. Either way, not hurting anything....instead of it going into my "rainy day" savings, it's just going here.
So basically time line for anyone who cares...
July 2016
- discharged CH7
- 534/524 TU/EQ
- $1000 Cap1 QS
- $500 NFCU secured
- $2000/24 mo installment
- reaffirmed 2 auto loans as well through the BK
August 2016
- Bad utilization on cards, but making larger payments
- 1st payment on credit builder loan
- 625/625 TU/EQ (assuming the auto loans reporting again helped the nearly 100pt boost)
Plans:
- relaxing and paying for the next 4-5 months, planning on running that Cap1 card up and down as hard as I can manage lol
- Going through my report and making sure everything is IIB and/or removed. I know there are a few things that need to be removed still so should get a few pity points back for it.
Any specific words of wisdom from the Masters here? Contemplating going for a 2nd QS in 2-4 months, they've been sending me 3-4 preapproval offers a week haha, but not sure that that will do a whole lot for me, except that they seem "upgrade" friendly so I can turn it into something else later in life and/or combine the limits eventually. Any other cards I should be eyeballing instead?
Otherwise my real questions... 6-7 months from now which is the NFCU card I should be applying for? Flagship, platinum something different? Apply for their overdraft protection line of credit? Barclay's? Or a different Cap1? When if ever should I harass store cards again such as BP or Amazon or something?
Anything overall I am missing currently that I should shoot for or any next steps I might be missing?
Thanks in advance and thanks in retrospect for the advice on which cards to hit and to get in bed with NFCU, had that in place and ready for when the discharge papers hit lol
Moreso for **bleep**s and giggles, grabbed an Overstock and Fingerhut account for $250 and $500 respectively. Amazon sent me a 7-10 letter so assuming Sync doesn't want to play, was hoping the added accounts and score boost might change their mind but I was wrong...meh.
Overstock I use from time to time, but never heard of Fingerhut and mostly regretting the impulse line after looking over their website prices lol. Are either worth attempting tio utilize or did I waste my time?
I had a newegg account prechange over to Sync, and don't remember how well (if at all) it reported due to my sporadic use of the account. Was mostly just there for when I bought computer stuffs every 2-3 years to use 12mo no interest financing. After I boosted to 740+ I really stopped paying attention to the min/max game, just made sure to make payments on time.