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Welcome to myFICO.
NFCU has been great to many on this site. First, are you eligeible to join NFCU? That can always be the first issue.
It looks like you have credit card accounts, both of which are maxxed out (512-500 is at 102% utilization)(729/750 is 97% utilization). Anything over 90% will have a very negative effect on your score. Get these both below 30% utilization OR for the highest possible score let one credit card report with 1% utilization.
As far as the secured loan, for now, pay it down but not completely off. You need a mix of credit and this helps. True the student loan can help meet the requirement, I have just seen others actually see a decrease in their score for completely paying off the secured loan.
You have done a great job keeping your accounts in good standing for 18 months, it will take some time to let those negative items in your account fade away.
NFCU will require 1 HP for joining and another for every product you pursue with them. For now I would wait, improve the scores and apply when all scores are into the 600s.
Good luck.
not trying to sound harsh or anything, but if you are having trouble paying off $1250 worth of CC debt, the last thing you should be doing is applying or trying to obtain more credit.
Also, I fail to see any advantage in taking out an additional loan to pay off a secured loan would have? Secured loans typically have much lower interest rates than unsecured, and since your scores are likely not good due to maxed out credit cards and some missed payments, you are not going to get prime rates anyway.
Honestly, you should just focus on getting those CC balances down as soon as you can. $1200 is not very much money, and paying them down would raise your scores a huge amount.
I agree with the other posters here! In hindsight I wish I had never gotten involved in getting personal loans and just paid down my cc's at the time using the snowball method instead. Sometimes personal loans just enable you to rack up debt on your cc's all over again and you ends paying both. Good luck with whatever you decided!☺
In my previous life I had a secured loan that had crazy interest charges. They were using things like my computer and mountain bike as collateral (early college days when I was clueless about credit).
It is an age old problem. If you need the money they will not loan it to you, if you don't they keep trying to give it to you.
A personal loan is a great option provided you have your budget and spending in check. As others have said, otherwise you are likely to just get further in debt as your credit lines open up.
We all wish you luck, many of us have been in your shoes before.