The uphill fico battle has paid off - TU 721

[girlie]

Two years ago, my credit was about as dismal as it gets:

TU 466

EQ 535

EX 490

Today, I just checked my scores and my TU is at 721 a jump of 18 points from a week ago!  I was thrilled.  Last year I applied for an Am Ex Delta Skymiles and it just aged to the one year mark and that inquiry is finally off.....my reward....18 points on my TU.  Not only that, but they increased my cl from $3,000 to $7,000 and I didn't even ask them!!!

Today my scores are as follows:

TU 721

EQ 698

EX 688

How I did it:  i paid off all my debt of $24,000 and now only have two cards and I keep a balance of around $2,000 - $3,000 which is about 11% utilization.  I know, I know, if I lowered it to 9% I would get a bigger increase, but I'm not that concerned.  Also, my NUMEROUS late payments are aging and all are over 2 years old now.  Also, I had an unpaid tax lien which was paid 1.5 years ago so it still shows, but the damage is lessening.  I also had two collections which have been paid off for over 1.5 years now.  I had between 1-5 inquiries on my report last year and they are finally dropping off.

I feel like cinderella and no longer have to hang my head in shame

I am hoping to be totally in the 700's by the end of this year which seems entirely possible.

[adamseve]

Girlie,

Your success gives me hope.  Keep up the good work.

I look at my scores and I cringe.  Although 90% of the items on my reports were all included in my Ch. 7 and should show no balances, a good many of them do so it's really hurting my score because it looks like I owe a lot of money.

I've disputed all of these and now I'm awaiting responses from the CRAs.  I included copies of my discharge order as well as the Sch. F listing the creditors so these should be a no-brainer to get removed.

I've also DV'd quite a few of the collections.  I've gotten at least 4 deleted.  Now I'm just waiting to see what comes of the Whychat letters and the HIPAA letters on paid collections.  I'm certain that once these collections are gone and the balances are $0 my score will go up.

Finally, I have a Orchard card w/ a measly $300 limit that I've had since 2005.  I'm going to go through the backdoor to see if I can get a CLI.  My utilization in 50% currently but will be at 10% by the end of the month.  I've also gotten the Crown Jewelers account with a $1500 CL.  I made a small purchase so this should hit my reports soon.  Finally, I got 2 sub-prime cards with extremely low limits.  We'll see what these do to help my scores.

Can't wait to grow up to be like you Girlie!

[Anonymous]

Wow! that's fantastic! Congratulations, girlie!!

[GFer]

I too feel hope!!!

Congratulations!!!