Hi all,
I'm a newcomer to these forums and to thinking about my credit in general, and I would love some advice - you can be brutal. Here's my quick financial backstory.
I am 27 years old with a credit score of 589. My only debt is student loans - but they are a whopping 55k. Due to my own carelessness and financial difficultures with my family, I had late payments on these loans for several months in a row late last year. After getting a panic attack from all the calls from debt collectors, I finally took full control of my finances and committed to getting myself on track. When I looked at my credit report I realized I was associated with accounts of my mom's (credit cards that I was an authorized user on as a child in case of emergencies), many of which were extremely late. I got all these items removed from my report. I also had never opened a credit card in my own name (thinking this was smart and would keep me from going into debt), and when I realized I needed one to build credit my credit was too low to be qualified for any good cards. So, I recently opened a capitol one secured master card with a $200 limit. My #1 priority is now paying all my bills on time and aggressively paying off my student loans with the goal to be debt free by the time I am 31. Some questions I have:
-I know I need to improve my line of credit to help boost my score. Would I be better off putting $1k into my secured card to increase my current line of credit, or opening up another secured card for $1k? Assuming of course I keep a low balance on all of these
-How much will paying off my loans faster than I need to improve my score?
-I am using a credit monitoring system through mint. If I pay all my bills on time for a year, and increase my line of credit by 1k, I should be able to raise my score to nearly 700 in a year. Are there other things I can do to help improve this that I have not thought about? I have read lots of articles but would love some advice on my personal situation.
Thanks!
