Hi everyone! This is my first time writing here, after reading for a few weeks, trying to take in as much information as possible. Here's my situation :
I was always a bit afraid of looking at my credit, I've had years of low income before I went back to college after a failed first career. Let's just say that I didn't do much credit building during those years, other than a 9000$ car loan that I've finished paying 4 years ago. I'm now 30, I have a good job with good income. I pay everything on time but I only have revolving credit, no loans or anything like that.
When I was finishing college about three years ago, I've had a major setback. I was working 25 hours a week in order to pay for my studies and therefore using as little student loans as possible. Everything went great until one day, the company I was working for started acting weird. Pay started being late, we'd get checks a few days late instead of direct deposit. One day, out of the blue, without any warning, the company went bankrupt, leaving me with a month of salary that I would never ever see and no more income on the horizon.
I managed to stay current on my student credit card but I had this one store card that I really let slip. The amount owed really wasn't that big, like 300$ at most, but I let months pass without payement. The account would go 2-3 months late until I got a job and fixed all that. Overall, there was six negative report on this account. The last negative report is dated from October 2011.
About 6 months later, I pulled my credit report and my score was 630. Not good, but not as catastrophic as I thought it would be. Since then, I have nothing but good, positive credit information.
It came back back to haunt me though, as about a year later, the credit card company ceased it's operations and sold the accounts to Affirm Financials. However, at the same time, I moved to a new city as I had gotten my first job in my field. I lost track of the account, what to do, who to pay and I just forgot all about it. One day, I received a phone call from affirm saying that the account was 5 months late and that I needed to pay or else the account would go to collection. I payed it all in full immediately as I wanted to avoid any further harm to my credit.
Since then, I have nothing but good information. Payments are on time and no more delinquencies at all.
Last month, I bought a mattress at a furniture retailer and got their credit card. Of course, they saw those late payments and were frisky about it. I didn't get the best offer and they've only given me 3000 as available credit but that was more than I needed.
About a week later, I ordered my free credit report and my score was 667. The new card showed so I guess that the inquiry as well as new credit lowered my score.
So I'd like to know if you think I'll be able to reach the 700's anytime soon? How long will those late payement hurt my score?
Other than that, I have a MasterCard with a 2000$ limit that's about 70%. I plan to lower that ratio by next month but since it's my only card, I tend to use it a lot.
The overall age of my accounts is a tad over 5 years and there are no other negative report.
Any idea on what to do next? I intend to purchase a car in about six months so I like my score as high as possible.
EDIT : One thing I forgot to mention, all my accounts are still rated R1 even with the delinquencies I listed above.
