Let's Get Started!

[mjfan82]

Hello All,

I figured it was time to start a thread of my own after reading tons of great information on this board. I officially started my journey by joining eliminateidtheft.com which seemed to be the pick of the litter on this forum. I understand that the scores provided by this service are FAKO scores but the 24 hour soft pull is amazing! Anyways, here's a concise reason why my credit sucks right now:

College:

Things went downhill when I was in school. I have approximately 7 - 9 charge offs due to irresponsible use of credit cards during college. I also have a bunch of student loan debt and good portion of those either reported late or were charged off. All of my student loans have since been consolidated  (Solution DV letters?)

Parents:

I have approximately 2 or 3 additional revolving accounts that were not opened by me. These accounts were also charged off. I suspect that one of my parents opened these accounts in my name. (Solution Direct Dispute to the 3 CRA's?)

Mortgage:

I was one of the lucky few that was able to obtain a modification on my Mortgage in 2013. The only problem is that my credit suffered tremendously because of it. I am current on my mortgage presently but they reported a few 60/90/120 day lates leading up to the point that my mortgage was modified. (Solution good will letter to remove late payments?)

That's the long and short of it which leaves me with my present scores. I just want to make sure I'm on the right track. Furthermore, my question is will the report I pulled from eliminateidtheft suffice to get me started fighting these baddies or should I get my actual FICO scores? Just trying to save a couple dollars if I can. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer! Happy Credit Building.

[mjfan82]

Anyone?? 

[srchick]

Personally, I would start by pulling all three free reports from annual credit report.com.  Granted they won't have scores attached, but they will be comprehensive for EVERYTHING currently showing in your credit reports.  As the experts on this forum have taught me, concentrate on achieving squeaky clean reports (PFD's, GW's, etc, deletion of collections, etc., etc.), monitor your util, pay on time or early every month, and the rise in credit scores will naturally happen.  From one who's walked the journey firsthand. 

[dursty87]

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@mjfan82 wrote:

Hello All,

I figured it was time to start a thread of my own after reading tons of great information on this board. I officially started my journey by joining eliminateidtheft.com which seemed to be the pick of the litter on this forum. I understand that the scores provided by this service are FAKO scores but the 24 hour soft pull is amazing! Anyways, here's a concise reason why my credit sucks right now:

College:

Things went downhill when I was in school. I have approximately 7 - 9 charge offs due to irresponsible use of credit cards during college. I also have a bunch of student loan debt and good portion of those either reported late or were charged off. All of my student loans have since been consolidated  (Solution DV letters?)

Parents:

I have approximately 2 or 3 additional revolving accounts that were not opened by me. These accounts were also charged off. I suspect that one of my parents opened these accounts in my name. (Solution Direct Dispute to the 3 CRA's?)

You could.  If they come back verified, you would most likely have to file a report with the police and send to CRA's to prove they aren't yours (fraud)

Mortgage:

I was one of the lucky few that was able to obtain a modification on my Mortgage in 2013. The only problem is that my credit suffered tremendously because of it. I am current on my mortgage presently but they reported a few 60/90/120 day lates leading up to the point that my mortgage was modified. (Solution good will letter to remove late payments?)

 
Goodwill for sure!

That's the long and short of it which leaves me with my present scores. I just want to make sure I'm on the right track. Furthermore, my question is will the report I pulled from eliminateidtheft suffice to get me started fighting these baddies or should I get my actual FICO scores? Just trying to save a couple dollars if I can. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer! Happy Credit Building.

I don't think it's 100% necessary to buy your FICO scores if you don't want to.  Personally, I did, just to track my progress as I did my re build.  Totally up to you.  I would pay more attention to the baddies in your report than your score.

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As another member stated, if you haven't already, I recommend getting your 3 free reports from annualcreditreport.com

[dzemboc77]

I would start by getting a pull off all 3 credit  bureaus like someone mentions. This will give you a solid baseline to start with. For my credit rebuilding I saved this info as something to look back on down the road and also as my starting point. Compare all 3 and look for any inconsistency's which if there are any you can dispute. You can try and good will your mortgage payment which I think is probably the least of your issues.

The charge off / derogatory items are what will kill your score. Also do you have any credit cards now and what are the balances. High utilization (anything about 20%) will cause your score to drop pretty significantly. For me I would see a 20-40 point drop if I hit that. Quick fix is pay it down and your score goes back up. If you don't have any credit cards or many you need to open some new ones even if they are secure to show you can pay your bills on time. Biggest thing right now is to pay everything on time. Making a 30 day late payment during the credit rebuilding process can kill your progress. The charge off's unfortunately you can either wait till they fall off or settle them out. I had to do this as I had several when I went to school as my income dropped significantly and I could not afford to pay everyone. DO NOT set up payment plans. The best is to get a Pay for delete but most company wont do them or at least 0 in my case. I settled them for about 20-25% of the total balance.  Make sure you get everything in writing before paying. Wait till you have enough money saved up and take them out  1 at a time. For me each 1 I saw a decent bump as the $3000 balance then reported $0 ect.....Now this may take some time and my advice to you like to my wife... If you can't pay your current bills you can't pay back anyone. Make sure you can save money before attempting to pay the credit wolves. Also before paying verify they are listed on your credit reports. Many scammers out there will rip you off.

Far as your parents go, thats pretty crappy if it happened unless someone stole your identity at one time. You only way around it is like 1 other user said and file a report for fraud. Not sure your relationship with your parents but if your on good terms I would talk to them about it and let them know what you are about to do. If they did use your credit nows the time to come clean before the police get involved. You should with some work be able to get those removed if you can prove it was not you.

Like your post says Lets get started. This  is a long haul and for me took over 2 years to get out of the hole. I finally bought my first house last month and got a few credit cards now with some pretty high limits as a safety net. I started our around 530-550 depending on the report and am now around the 700 mark. Still not perfect and will continue to climb over time. Once you get some credit lines open, pay them on time, your score will start to go up slowly just by doing that as your baddys age and impact your score less and less even if you don't do anything.  Keep in mind and this happened to me, your debt can be 5 years old.... and a new debt collector buys it and it will report and look as if it just happened. This hurt me early on for my local bank credit card. To them it looked like I had just had a $4k  collections even though it was 6 years ago. Its paid off now thank god.

[mjfan82]

Thanks so much for your replies! I pulled my reports from the 3 bureaus and I'm on my way. My first plan of action is to tackle those student loan lates. I'm hoping to dispute them under the argument that they were consolidated. I saw another forum member had great success using this method. In regards to one of my charge offs (BOA), it has a DOFD of October 2008. However, I was 30 days late in April of 2007 but caught up in May of 2007. Is it possible that since I was 30 days late in 2007 that I can get that one 30 day late record deleted from my account? 

[mjfan82]

I got this excerpt from an article I found on Experian.com

"The original delinquency date applies to the first late payment in a series. So, if a payment is late today but next month the account is brought current, seven years from today that late payment would be deleted, but the account would continue to be reported with the more current payment history."

So if I understand correctly, the 30 day late on my BOA charge off account from April of 2007 should be removed correct? 

[dursty87]

Yes. Late payments remain on your report for 7 years from the month of occurrence. So if you were late in April 2007 that TL shouldn't reflect that specific late payment.

[mjfan82]

Great to know! I know the 30 day late is 7 years old but it's still worth a try to get it removed. I'll keep you guys posted!! Thanks.