My Credit Repair Journal - Help always welcome!

[cflowers0115]

Hello all,

My "credit" story really begins about 10 years ago when I was in college. I obtained several credit cards that I had no right having and irresponsibly racked up debts I couldn't afford to pay. I floated by for years, overspending and never really financially growing up. It took me losing my job in 2008 while going through a medical situation (being in an at-will state my employer cited this as the cause of my termination despite the fact that I was terminated 2 hours after revealing I needed to have surgery), and basically having to start over from scratch.

I'm picking up the pieces..

I made it my New Years resolution to get my credit score in order and could use as much help as possible.

Currently my scores are as follows:

Experian: 620

Equifax: 563

Transunion: 606

My lines of open credit are:

Capital One Platnium CC - Balance Owed: $600  Total Limit: $1,250 *increased limit by $500 just today

Capital One Platnium CC - Balance Owed: $550  Total Limit: $1,250 *increased limit by $500 just today

Best Buy Rewards CC - Balance Owed: $270  Total Limit: $300

Merrick Bank CC - Balance Owed: $600  Total Limit: $700

All four balances will be paid off at months end when I get my Q4 bonus.. so I will have no credit card debt.

I also have two installment loans.. one for my car, the other for covering medical expenses.

Ally Auto: Total loan $24,570 (obtained 6 months ago)

OneMain Financial: $7,450 (Obtained 1 year ago for $11,000)

I'm hoping to refinance or pay both of these off within due time as their rates are 10% and 15% roughly each.

I also within the past 4 years have 5 other accounts listed in collections. They are:

First Federal Credit C (oddly how it's listed on report)

3 accts - totaling $482

- These are all medical collections for surgeries I needed to have.

Midland Funding

2 accts - Totaling $595

- I acknowledge these are all mine and am really just looking for the way to get these off my report as quickly as possible.

I will be earning enough to pay all cc balances and these 5 collection accounts off at end of January. The Auto Loan I have no clue what to do about that besides wait another year and a half for it to fall  off my report.

I will update as I learn. This is all new to me and, to be honest, considerably overwhelming. There is a wealth of information and I honestly don't know where to start.. I guess paying off the balances on my cards for starters.

Any help would be appreciated. I've made a decent living over the years but my credit has always crippled me.  Any advice, or feedback, I can get as I go through this would be greatly appreciate.

Thanks ahead of time for any help or support..

[cflowers0115]

I also forgot to mention that on all existing debt (ie. cc's, auto loan, personal loan) I have 100% on time payment history. I'm still trying to pick up the mess I created years ago.

[mycredit07]

Lowering your debt ratio by raising your credit limits and paying down your balance will definitely help raise your scores since debt ratio is 30% of your credit scores. The one thing you need to do is leave a very small balance on each account according to the new FICO system created recently and revised.

before paying off you collection accounts, try to pay for a lesser amount especially if the accounts are 4-5 years or older as these older accounts are not impacting them as much as if they were recent. Sometimes paying off a collection account can actually lower your credit score. I like pay per delete method. If they want your money, some companies may agree to have the account deleted from your credit report. Note: GET IT IN WRITING "BEFORE" YOU PAY!

Be smart, educated, and patient. It will all pay off in a matter of months. Good luck and Happy New Year!

MOD EDIT TO REMOVE LINK TO WEBSITE AND FULL NAME 

[cflowers0115]

Yesterday I requested CLI on both Cap 1 cards and was shocked that I was approved for $500 each. Today I got notification that my score on equifax jumped 12 points. Hoping it will increase even more dramatically when i pay off my balances at the end of the month.

Any feedback on how I'm going about doing things would be appreciated.

[titanofold]

You're doing fantastic!

For the CAs, you'll want to do PFD. The medical collections, though, you might want to contact the hospital that you owe, and ask if you pay them directly if they'll pull it back from the collectors.

With the Cap1 CCs, do large payments over the next 6 months. You'll be able to get a much larger CLI then. (Or pay them off and use them heavily for the next 6 months and PIF each month.)

Pay off the store cards as soon as you can as the high utilization  combined with being at 90% is getting you a double ding.

[cflowers0115]

Question.. so how would i go about getting the fact that dealership ran my credit with 8 banks without my knowledge when I my car loan last June? I see hard credit pulls from every lender under the sun (I have 7 or 8 hard pulls under each bureau thanks to this). What would you do to get this corrected as it's assumingly affecting my score?

Also, should I pay my balances down to 7% per card? Or 7% UTI overall? I'm torn on this.

Thanks!

[titanofold]

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@cflowers0115 wrote:

Question.. so how would i go about getting the fact that dealership ran my credit with 8 banks without my knowledge when I my car loan last June? I see hard credit pulls from every lender under the sun (I have 7 or 8 hard pulls under each bureau thanks to this). What would you do to get this corrected as it's assumingly affecting my score?

Also, should I pay my balances down to 7% per card? Or 7% UTI overall? I'm torn on this.

Thanks!

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Those will be counted as 1 inquiry if they were within 15 days of each other. If you get any guff, a manual review will get you around the issue.

Utilization doesn't matter until you're going to apply for something as FICO has no memory of it. When you're getting ready to apply, you'll want to let all but 1 card report $0. The last card you want to report 1% - 9% of its CL.

[cflowers0115]

I called TU and they basically told me I need to get a letter from each individual bank they ran my credit with giving them approval to remove the hard inquiry, there are 11 hard inquiries they ran when they were looking for financing for me. FML, any suggestions? I'm livid they pulled my credit so many times, with so many lenders, without so much as a peep from them.

[cflowers0115]

Also, tiny update.. I spoke w/ CapOne and they upgraded both my platinum cards to Quicksilver cards w/ 1.5% cash back.

[titanofold]

Well, don't get too uppity about the inquiries. In fact, stop being livid. Don't get emotional about it. They're only inquiries that lose their impact after 12 months. And, most lenders don't worry about inquiries further out than 6 months. We're already beyond 6 months now, so they shouldn't be a barrier anymore.

Don't waste energy on it. What the dealership did is a common practice, and, like I said, they count as 1 inquiry, not 7 or 11, when it comes to scoring because they would all be marked as an inquiry for an auto loan and they're within a short period of each other. This is specifically built into the scoring system so that you can shop around for the best loan value without it hurting you down the road. The same goes for when you go mortgage shopping. All the inquiries within a short time frame are counted as 1.