I still very much consider myself to be in the rebuilding stage. I'd been making so much progress after starting rebuilding in Oct 2013 but fell off after I had an unexpected emergency this time last year causing me to rack up a 30 day late fee on almost all of my cards in May except for one. I've been in rebuilding mode pt2 ever since that happened but have been starting to see more results so far this year. I know how a lot of you feel about Comenity SCT cards, and I admit to having opener's remorse about 2 of them (Avenue and Fullbeauty), but I've liked the ones that I actually use. Well since Jan I've gotten CLI's on all of them, they are all at $800 with the exception of JCrew which I got up to $500 after pulling teeth. I see a lot of posts about how other people's JCrew grows massively but that hasn't been the case for me and it is the card I use the most with them! Also in Jan I took out an auto loan for $16k
After the CLIs my score started to improve some more and I was able to pay down a significant portion of my CC Christmas balances when I got my bonus in Feb. I got a CLI on my Credit One of 650 bringing it to $1350 and my scores jumped even further. So I was feeling pretty good as I've never seen my EX above 600 and my TU and EQ were reporting the highest I'd seen them as well (616 and 625 respectively). I know these aren't great scores in the grand scheme of things, but after spending almost 3 years in the mid 500's I was very happy. Other than my car, I hadn't applied for any new credit in about 2 years so I decided to go on a tiny app spree last week. I applied for the Amazon Prime store card and got an SL of $800 which I was denied for about 2 years ago. I also applied for the walmart card as I'd seen it suggested to apply for those together if you get approved for one. I had to call in to verify info and was approved for $250. I didn't want to push my luck so I didn't ask for a CLI and will just let it grow organically. I then applied for the QS1 and Discover IT cards. I'm a little surprised that I didn't hear anything back from Cap One immediately, but my EQ has had fraud issues so I think I will have to call and verify. I got the wait message for Discover too, but got an email a few days later saying that I was approved. I COULD NOT believe my eyes!! That one was a super long shot and I 100% expected to be denied (again lol, was denied back in 2010). I know that I squeaked by on the approval as my SL is only $500 @ the highest APR but I am still ecstatic! I got the card yesterday and it is just so beautiful.
For those wondering, and I'm sorry I've always been a rambler, I have a total of 9 baddies on my CR, the 7 late payments from May of last year, 1 collection and one charge off. Scores at time of approval were all low 600's.
Thanks again everyone for the help, advise, and inspiration!
