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Any help would be appreciated!!

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megan8110
Established Member

Any help would be appreciated!!

I've been trolling around and I wanted to get some feedback from everyone regarding my situation. Basically I went buckwild in my early twenties with credit cards. I did get a loan in 2005 to settle with most of the credit card companies except BOA wouldn’t settle with me. Ever since then, my credit has been pretty bad. I'm now 31, married and we are looking to buy a house. We have been renting for the 3 years that we have been married and are ready for the next step. HOWEVER both of our credit history is pretty shot. I'll break mine down like this:

myFICO EQ Score is 607, my TU from transunion.com pulled 699. My revolving accounts are $2,549 and my installments are $28,559. I have no collections or public records accounts. I have 9 accounts with negative indicators. All of which are lates Smiley Sad Here are the negative accounts broken down:

Conn's opened June 2010 status is current, 6 30 day lates and 2 60 days late balance of $1,559.

BOA card, opened Dec. 2002, status is current but it is closed. It has a balance of $1,095. It has 15 30 day lates, 11 60 day lates, and 12 90 day lates (this was one of the cards I got in my early twenties, disregarded it, tried to settle with them in 2006 but they wouldn't and I've been off and on with them up until 2011.

Wells Fargo SL opened in 2005, it's been in forebearance for quite awhile and was sold to ACS. It has a balance of $2,677 and it has 1 60 day late and 1 90 day late. It is current.

Macy's DSNB, opened 2010, Description says "Closed or paid account/zero balance, Account closed by credit grantor". It has 4 30 day lates, 2 60 day lates and 1 90 day late.

Sallie Mae SL, Opened in 2002, been in forebearance. Has a balance of $3,745 and has 1 90 day late.

My husbands car (which we NEVER should've gotten) is now through GM financial (formerly through Americredit, it wasn’t sold or anything but I guess Americredit was taken over by GM financial??). Opened in 2008, has a balance of $16,281 and has 26 30 day lates.

I have an older Conn's account that is closed (because I had gone back to get something else there when I currently had an account there already so they just created another account and closed this one) and that one has 2 30 day lates on it, current status $0 balance.

CU loan that was opened in 2005, paid off in 2006 $0 balance and has 2 30 day lates. Description reads "closed or paid account/zero balance, unsecured"

I have several other old accounts that are closed but have $0 balance. Do the closed ones hurt my score? I also am an AU on my parent's Discover card. Obviously it's showing as my oldest account since it was opened in 1991 (I was in the 4th grade!!) . Do I need to have this taken off?? It has no lates or delinquencies and has a CL of $16,500.

If I can, I would love to send out some GW to some of the places to get some things taken off. I do realize that most of the things on my CR will only come off with time, but anything that you see that could possibly come off with a GW, please let me know. I'm working on snowballing most of our debt. Also at this point, since we don't have any active open CC, should we try to get one? Is not having an active one on our CR hurting my score? I get confused about all of that stuff!! Thank you for any help you can possibly give me!! I appreciate it!!
myFICO EQ 10/03 607

FAKO's: TU 699 10/04
EX 661 09/14
EQ 621 09/14
Goal: 700+ across the board

Trying to figure out what to put in my pocket, nothing is there right now.
Message 1 of 10
9 REPLIES 9
S7
Established Contributor

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

The only thing I can offer on all of this, (there a many other members who will be able to help tons!) is to def not get off of the parents card. That showing as the oldest TL and in the best standing, removing it will hurt!

"When you are down in the mouth, remember, everything turned out ok for Jonah."

Current FICO's(by lender) 10/9/12
EX:649, EX:651, TU:683
Message 2 of 10
megan8110
Established Member

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

Thank you S7!!!!
myFICO EQ 10/03 607

FAKO's: TU 699 10/04
EX 661 09/14
EQ 621 09/14
Goal: 700+ across the board

Trying to figure out what to put in my pocket, nothing is there right now.
Message 3 of 10
Johnny_Favorite
Regular Contributor

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

Some observations:

 

1. You still have a significant amount of debt it seems. Before you even think about buying a house, you should focus on getting your debt down to reasonable levels. That $1500 balance on the first card screams to me, "you're not ready yet." You also have a car loan which you are $16,000 in the hole for and paying late almost every month and I don't see how you'd be able to prove to the lender that you can handle a house payment when you can't even pay your car on time. Pay it on time going forward or sell it for a loss... that seems like a monster going against you.

 

2. You can basically try a goodwill deletion of lates on any of the accounts that are paid off.

 

3. What are the Dates of First Delinquency on these debts? You might want to see that date because if they are say 2005 or so, then they are set to drop off your credit report soon and you won't have to do anything with them.

 

4. I would say set a realistic timeframe such as 2 to 3 years and in that time, start writing goodwill letters and paying down your debt. A secured credit card with a $500 to $1000 limit couldn't hurt. And you must make a pact with your guy that going forward neither of you will NEVER be late again.

 

5. If you rush this process, you are going to set yourself up for failure. You made a lot of mistakes and correcting them is going to take time. Count your blessings if you make fast progress, but don't hold your breath. It is really all about changing your patterns going forward. Don't ever be late on that auto loan again or any other debt for that matter. You need at least 2  years of solid payment history at minimum and little to no debt. I don't think you guys are ready for home ownership in my opinion, not until you tackle some issues. Getting a secured help could help, but if you are making late payments on everything else, don't bother getting it until you can start paying everything on time.




Message 4 of 10
novabama
Frequent Contributor

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

I have to agree with Johnny here. You really need to get a hold on that outstanding debt first before you make the biggest purchase of your entire life. At the very minimum they are going to want to see a full 12 months of on time payments for a mortgage. 

 

As for the paid/settled/closed accounts, like he said, you can probably GW them. Email/fax/call/write, do whatever you have to. I personally like to saturate their means of communications. You can of course dispute with the CRAs for any inaccuracies... of any sort. If they don't respond in 30 days they are deleted. 

 

My initial suggestion since you are just getting started is to create a master/short-longish term plan. For example, mine is to clear my reports, have two revolving accounts and buy a home by 2014. A very important tool for me has been the excel spreadsheet I made for myself. I listed all of the important account information in different columns and X'd which CRs they appeared on. If you'd like to see an example, I'd be glad to share. There are two reasons this helps me: 1-because I cross out each item as it's taken care of and it's VERY rewarding to watch your success as your list diminishes. It is also motivation to see ok I got that much done I can keep going. 2-it's easier to stay organized. I have what feels like hundreds of copies of my reports too. I keep most of them as well as any docs to/from CA/OCs in a 3 ring binder with the first page being my excel progress sheet., then a tab for each CRA as well as a tab for disputes and apps.

 

I know that was more advice to get started than anything... but you have to start somewhere and no one said you have to listen to me Smiley Tongue. Good luck and you should already be proud that you want to remedy the situation and move forward!

 

*edited for typo

Message 5 of 10
megan8110
Established Member

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

Thank you Johnny and Novabama for your input I appreciate it. We aren't expecting miracles of any sort and any improvement that we can get done I will be BEYOND thankful for. Trust me we haven't had a late payment in 6 months and We plan to continue that trend.

I have several Excel spreadsheets that show our debt snowball and our monthly budgets and etc etc etc. I loom at them everyday seeing where we can make changes in order to pay more here and there to get our debt down.

I'm not or did say we had a time frame for a house. All I said is we are looking. An that is mainly saying looking at what is needed by us in irder to qualify for a home loan. I do understand that our credit will take time to repair since we so flippantly ignored it for so long and are just now doing something about it. Thank you again for your feedback, I really do appreciate it Smiley Happy
myFICO EQ 10/03 607

FAKO's: TU 699 10/04
EX 661 09/14
EQ 621 09/14
Goal: 700+ across the board

Trying to figure out what to put in my pocket, nothing is there right now.
Message 6 of 10
Shogun
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

Hello and welcome to the forums!

 

Congrats on deciding to take control of your finances.  I for one understand the mistakes that are made when we were young but we're putting that behind us.  The members have given you some good information.   Set goals, paying off debt, getting everything caught up and cleaned up and then added good credit.  You're not that far behind and you can catch up!

 

I'm going to put some links below that I want you to read and start your journey here.  Feel free to post and we will be glad to help.  Good Luck!

 

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/User-Guidelines-General/Common-Abbreviations/td-p/88458

 

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/What-Steps-Do-I-Take-Do-I-DV-PFD/td-p/337142

 

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/GW-letter-Q-amp-A-Examples-and-GW-Success-Sto...

 

Edited:  Missed a link  Smiley Happy

Starting Score: 504
July 2013 score:
EQ FICO 819, TU08 778, EX "806 lender pull 07/26/2013
Goal Score: All Scores 760+, Newest goal 800+
Take the myFICO Fitness Challenge

Current scores after adding $81K in CLs and 2 new cars since July 2013
EQ:809 TU 777 EX 790 Now it's just garden time!

June 2017 update: All scores over 820, just pure gardening now.
Message 7 of 10
megan8110
Established Member

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

Thank you Shogun!! Thank you for the links as well! They have been really helpful!!
myFICO EQ 10/03 607

FAKO's: TU 699 10/04
EX 661 09/14
EQ 621 09/14
Goal: 700+ across the board

Trying to figure out what to put in my pocket, nothing is there right now.
Message 8 of 10
RobertEG
Legendary Contributor

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

Your major scoring impact, at least in payment history, seems to be a plethora of lates.

Obviously, the older they are, the less their impact, but multiple lates, and particularly any major lates of 90+ days, are keeping your overall file in a "dirty" scoring categorization.

I would suggest you put together a simple table, showing in col. 1 the level of delinquency, col 2 its date of occurence, and col 3, its 7 year exclusion date.

You then have a snapshot at any given future time of what will most likely still be remaining in your payment history scoring at time of loan application.

DOFD on any given account does not appear to be relevant, as you have no collections or charge-offs.

The table will also give you an idea of what GWs would have the most FICO impact, with 60+ lates and recents taking priority.

 

Any accounts that are currently,or might become, delinquent may lead to new reporting, or a collection or charge-off. So potential future impact may be an issue. 

 

As loan app time approaches, % util on each account will become a focus, and can then be fine-tuned.

Message 9 of 10
megan8110
Established Member

Re: Any help would be appreciated!!

Thank you Robert that is a wonderful idea!! I really appreciate it! Smiley Happy
myFICO EQ 10/03 607

FAKO's: TU 699 10/04
EX 661 09/14
EQ 621 09/14
Goal: 700+ across the board

Trying to figure out what to put in my pocket, nothing is there right now.
Message 10 of 10
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