Long story short, bought out a business from the 2nd owner who ran it into the ground. Did it because the original owner was a good man & the business itself had insane potential. Unfortunately, the 2nd owner did not pay vendors, destroyed relationships with customers, and pillaged all assets into oblivion. The business was so bad that the 2nd owner did not even have the funds to declare bankruptcy. They were that shortsighted. The properties had less than 30 days before they would be seized. So I bought in, reluctantly, and eventually became the sole owner.
First vendor opened me up right away. They demanded 4k. I had nothing really to my name except my credit score. I had a PayPal card go to collections while I was in college because they never sent a statement and I guess things got lost in the mail. That's paid off but I didn't know about pay for delete at the time so I have another year or two before that's completely gone. Aside from that my credit was good enough that I had just enough to keep that first vendor open. I reluctantly gave them my Chase card and maxed it out for the 4k.
Now bringing this business back from it's absolute destruction meant that 4k was quickly disappearing. So I opened up anywhere rom 4-6 more cards. Each with a smaller limit than the previous. I also increased credit limits and eventually stopped when my last approved card was for only $500. I figured that was the end of that. So I opened up as much as I could in order to keep everything running. I was well aware that my credit was now completely shot. But yea, I was all in. I put all my cards on the table, literally.
Fast foward about 3 years.
Business is breaking records. I got this dead thing off the ground, started off crawling, now it's on its feet. It's still a bit wobbly but it's **bleep** near ready to start running. If I can take off, the skys the limit. I have things fully upgraded, profits are **bleep** good, and I reinvest everything that comes in because, like I said, the sky is the limit so long as I keep pushing.
Now the problem.
My credit is still messed up. All those credit cards I took out were personal. I didn't expect to become the owner, but now I am. Those cards need to be paid back through my own salary. I try my best to throw my salary back into the business but I'm well aware that my 0% APRs are all gone now. So I need to pay them off, which I'm doing. It will take me until the end of this year to pay it off. So I can do that. And like most things with credit, the only way to fix it is to pay and wait. So I guess there's my answer to my question coming up.
My business has no credit cards other than a Capital One Sparks Gold card with a limit of $500. This means I have to pay off the balance every single day. Now I use this card for small purchases and it sucks because the pending ones take days to come off. So that means my limit is almost always looming even when I pay off the balance at 110% (maximum allowed). Hell, I even make one payment on my mobile app and one on the full website so I can double down (it's a glitch that works half the time only) and it's still difficult. If I end up with a negative balance on the card it'll only hit me twice as hard a few days later when all the pending purchases build up again.
Now I apply for credit limits once a month with CapOne. Every single time it's denied due to High Utilization first and foremost. After that it's the collections thing I paid off about 6-7 years ago. It's the high utilization though. I'm at about 70% and yes I know. I pay it off every week with my own salary. Like I said, I know in a year this problem will be gone, but **bleep**. I could use some type of loophole or secret phone number to call. Something! I mean I spend about 2500-3k a month on this sparks card even though the limit is only $500. And that's only because I can't fit anymore purchases in that card due to the long pending orders and pending payments process. Ideally I'd like to spend 10-15k on my business credit card and get all the perks from cash back. I currently get only 1%.
So any secrets or tips? Besides, wait & pay? I had a lady process a manual review of my sparks card in hopes that they might approve me for an increase that way but online is futile. Im still waiting for a result from that. I plan on taking out a large bank loan at the end of the year and currently have no hard inquiries and would like to keep it that way.
FICO is 669 on Chase BoA PayPal Discover & Barclay.
My FACO on Vantage/CreditKarma is 620.
