CURRENT EQUIFAX SCORE: 584
Credit cards I have:
Target store $500 - Member since 2007
1st Premier $275 - Member since 2008
Hooters $700 - Member since 2008
HSBC $300 - Member since 2007
Best Buy Reward Zone $500 - Member since 2008
Victorias Secret $450 - Member since 2009
Macy's store $800 - Member since Sept 2010
And 10 minutes ago got approved for Walmart store $700 while shopping on the website.
I have $317 and $198 hospital collection from 2005, 3 student loan Nelnet lates from 2006, a Sallie Mae student loan charge-off from 2006, $700 Sprint collection from 2006, 1 CapOne late from 2008 (authorized user on fiances account), and $80 medical collection from 2007 that was just put on my report in 2009
I have 9 inquiries, 5 of which will fall next month.
Also my car loan was started in 2006 and I've never been late, and am current with Nelnet havent been late since 2006.
I know it's a mess but what can I do to help my score? I appreciate anyone's pearls of wisdom! 
Starting Score (5.13.10): 557
Thank you for your response! Would you suggest ditching 1st Premier? Limit is only $275.. I never use the card I only pay the $7 monthly fee each month.
@jrdenver wrote:I would recommend not applying for new credit. You have 8 revolving trades now (9 if you include the AU), which is a lot. Two of them opened this year (Macy's & Walmart). Keep paying on time, keep your utilization under 10%. Perhaps someone else can talk to whether or not the Cap One account will drop off if you ask to be removed as an AU, but if it is one of your more recent lates, it may help to be off of it (if it will drop off -- and if the utilization % on that account isn't ultra-low overall).
Biggest thing is not to keep opening new trades. You have established several accounts, now let them age (in good standing, of course!).
Utilization, letting the derogs fall off, not having a lot of new inquieries, and paying on time.
From my experience with Capital One, once you are removed as an AU it will just stop reporting. It will not fall off automatically.
But you can easily dispute with reasons being that this is someone else's account and the entire TL will be deleted.
Welcome. Hopefully you can take time to read around and get answers to several of your questions but I will address them a bit here as well.
First, you have quite a lot of store cards..bank cards look better so I would suggest not getting any more cards and focus on paying what you have on time. Do you have balances on the cards? That can make quite a difference and if you do, focus on paying them off and then keeping them at $0 or very low (you do NOT have to pay interest to have a good FICO score).
Also, your credit is all very new so your score will increase with age.
So what you can do:
HIPPA prevents medical information from being in the public, so you can ask for the medical collections to be removed (search this site for how to do that). You might also want to contact the providers and see if you can work out a payment with them so they will remove it from your account.
Sallie Mae and Nelnet might respond to a Goodwill letter (Esentially asking them to please remove the charge-off information from your credit report) but most likely you will have to wait until those fall off (7 years total). GW letter information can be found on this site. (You can try doing the same for Sprint)
I would remove myself from any AU card that had a late unless they can goodwill the bank. This resulted in my scores going from 730s to 790s when I removed myself from a card with a late though so...
Finally, you are paying $7 a month (ie, $84 a year) for a card??? Yikes!! since that card isn't your oldest, I would call them and tell them if they don't remove your fee, you will cancel. For that low limit and that high a fee, it's not worth it in my opinion.
So basically, to sum up, the best way to work on your score is stay good on all accounts from now on and to try goodwilling the companies that you have "baddies" with and ask them to remove the info from your credit report.
Good luck!
