Fixing my score, but it's 100% accurate

[Anonymous]

I have six 30-day late payments on two auto loans in 2015 and 2016 when my husband was paying our bills. It was too much for him to handle alone so we've since divided the bill paying responsiblities between us to make it easier to manage. Our problem wasn't inability to pay; it was simply mismanagment and disorganization. Our poor credit scores are totally accurate and I don't plan to request any changes, but I'm wondering what else I can do. Do I just sit back and wait? 

I've taken over all of our debt payments while he pays our living expenses. I haven't been late on any installment loans or credit cards in the last 12 months. My student loans have been in repayment for four years and have never been late. Since I took over, we've started using the snowball method to get out of debt fast and stay out of debt. Today, we have no credit card debt; however, out of fear of falling back into it, I closed those four accounts. I think that hurt us. They were older accounts and affected the age of our credit histories. I am now paying down my car loan and I'm wondering if paying it off early will hurt us again by limitiing the possibility of a more positive pay history. 

Since I now have no revolving credit and credit card utilization, I applied and was approved for a capitalone card thinking that I would charge and PIF each month. Will this help? How soon?

I understand the importance of the pay history and have been on time with every payment for every debt for the last year. I'm disappointed how low my score still is. 

[AverageJoesCredit]

Closing those accounts, they should still be on your report for upwards toward 10 years or more so they should still help your history. I have an accounts on my Ex that ages like 18 years ago so its still factoring in my aaol. Looks like your doing everything possible to help manage not missing payments and thats one of the biggest keys to good credit. Just keep making on time payments and have a good mix of credit and in time youll be on top of things. Best of luck

[Anonymous]

Closing those four accounts that were in good standing wouldn't have been my first choice, however at least they were closed in good standing and not charge offs so they'll help some.

Ideally you want several cards to report a $0 balance and one card to report a balance of less than 10% to get maximum score for utilization, which is 30% of your credit score. In this case don't PIF the Capital One card, instead pay it down to reporting a balance between 1-10% each month. Maybe open 2-3 other cards to keep at a $0 balance, although doing this may lower your Average Age of Accounts (AAoA) score some. Since AAoA is only 10% of your score it may still be worth it to open the additional cards to setup an ideal utilization scenario. Perhaps some of the credit card gurus in here can weigh in on this. 

One would think that having $0 in credit card debt would be best, but the credit bureaus actually give a lower score for this than if you have a balance of 1-10%. They like to see that you have credit and are managing it appropriately versus not having any credit card debt. 

Also you said "Our poor credit scores are totally accurate and I don't plan to request any changes, but I'm wondering what else I can do.", have you considered writing goodwill letters to the creditors for those 30-day late payments. Assuming you had an on-time history prior to and after the 30-day lates, the creditors may be willing to remove the reported late payments from your credit bureau files. Spending 20-30 minutes to write a few letters or emails to the creditor's corporate office explaining the situation may result in removals and an increased score.

From my own experience I was able to get some 30, 60, and 90 day lates removed by writing to the creditors, explaining the situation that caused the lates, and what I have done to prevent the situation from occurring again. This helped my scores a good bit (40+ points).

Overall it seems like you have your finances in order, now you just need to tweak your utilization for maximum pts and try to clean up some of the past lates.

Good luck!!

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I came to the same realizations after reading some more. I will send GW letters to my car companies and see what happens. And I already got J Crew and Victoria's Secret cards (soft pull) to help with utilization. My only question is when to pay so they report $0 and 1%-10%. Do I pay after the bill is cut but before the due date or do I pay right away, as soon as I charge the cards, but before the bill is cut?

[medicgrrl]

Pay before the statement cuts. You don't have to use all the cards every month. Let the Cap1 card report a small balance by paying the card down before the statement cuts and let the other 2 accounts report a $0 balance

[Anonymous]

Did I screw up already? I was on CreditBoard and there are posts there that store cards aren't good and don't improve credit. They just look like a risk to issuers of major cards.

[Anonymous]

Also, how does a card help my credit if it's never used and always reported as $0? I read somewhere in here that the only way to bury bad pay history is with good pay history. Do I have a pay history if I never charge and never pay?