My husband and I are planning to buy a house in the next 6-12 months, so I want to do what I can do boost our credit scores before that happens. As I posted in another thread, I just discovered 2 med bills in collections that I need to take care of, obviously, more than anything else. I plan to DV, PFD, pay, and then ask the cra's to verify, so hopefully somewhere along the way they'll get deleted, but if not, at least they'll be paid and set to come off in 2.5 years. Here is how the rest of my credit history looks, please tell me what I should do to pick it up a notch 
-car loan for 15k, taken out 19 months ago, no late payments, owe about 11.5k -Bank of American credit card, 13k limit, never charge more than 2k per month, always PIF and on time, open about 2 years -Capital One account, closed, no lates, was open about 2 years before I closed bc of annual fee -2 student loans totalling about 20k, only 3 payments made, all on time, then paid off in full -Children's Place store card, $500 limit, always PIF and on time That's it. Not much history, I know, which is probably the biggest thing hurting me... Only time will fix that. Do you think I need another open card? I had always heard that you wanted as few open as possible, but now i'm hearing that it's really creating too little history for me. But i don't want another inquiry and open account if its going to hurt me more than it will help me in the short amount of time it would be open before I make my mortgage app. Advice? I also need to pay down the principal left on my car loan a bit, which time will help, and i'm going to try to make about $1000 in extra principal payments before we apply for a mortgage, so the decreased debt should help a bit. Any other suggestions?? I haven't ordered my scores through this site yet (I probably will next month tho, when my history may have changed a bit...), but I ordered my Experian VantageScore from their site and that was about 800, and I ordered my Equifax Fico and that was exactly 700... but somehow equifax doesn't have my collections data, so my other scores would be a bit lower on the Fico scale, i'm guessing. Hopefully the collections info will be deleted and help a lot, but i need some other tips to pick up my score a few points! BTW, you know that program that myFICO.com sells that lets you alter credit report data to see how it would affect your score? Is it worth it?
-car loan for 15k, taken out 19 months ago, no late payments, owe about 11.5k -Bank of American credit card, 13k limit, never charge more than 2k per month, always PIF and on time, open about 2 years -Capital One account, closed, no lates, was open about 2 years before I closed bc of annual fee -2 student loans totalling about 20k, only 3 payments made, all on time, then paid off in full -Children's Place store card, $500 limit, always PIF and on time That's it. Not much history, I know, which is probably the biggest thing hurting me... Only time will fix that. Do you think I need another open card? I had always heard that you wanted as few open as possible, but now i'm hearing that it's really creating too little history for me. But i don't want another inquiry and open account if its going to hurt me more than it will help me in the short amount of time it would be open before I make my mortgage app. Advice? I also need to pay down the principal left on my car loan a bit, which time will help, and i'm going to try to make about $1000 in extra principal payments before we apply for a mortgage, so the decreased debt should help a bit. Any other suggestions?? I haven't ordered my scores through this site yet (I probably will next month tho, when my history may have changed a bit...), but I ordered my Experian VantageScore from their site and that was about 800, and I ordered my Equifax Fico and that was exactly 700... but somehow equifax doesn't have my collections data, so my other scores would be a bit lower on the Fico scale, i'm guessing. Hopefully the collections info will be deleted and help a lot, but i need some other tips to pick up my score a few points! BTW, you know that program that myFICO.com sells that lets you alter credit report data to see how it would affect your score? Is it worth it?