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My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

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Adkins
Legendary Contributor

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

@NormanFH - I've been told my loan percentage sucks.

Last HP 08-07-2023



Message 11 of 34
Adkins
Legendary Contributor

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

My FICO Auto 3 score has moved from 609 to 635. The others haven't changed much, but it's been less than a month.

Last HP 08-07-2023



Message 12 of 34
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

step 1:

as you obviously stated, you need to get your utilization down to around 7% as fast as you financially can. you can probably go higher than that and get maximum points, but ive always went with that just to be safe, and i gain maximum points.

 

step 2:

as stated by another member, id lose that costco card. its barely over a year old, the majority of your utilization, and it will be halfway to fixing step 1. the other half to step 1 is is working on that capital one card utilization.

 

step 3:

medical bills are very easy and have a lot of weight in terms of negotiating PFDs. theyre in a special category. the "unexpected circumstances" category. unlike an account you willfully signed up for and then bailed on. like my apartment lease i bailed on that i successfully negotiated a PFD with after explaining all of the circumstances to them.

 

once you take care of that utilization, lose the costco card, and negotiate those medical bills, the only thing you will be left with are the lates on the student loans. which from what you said, youre going to have to suffer from them unfortunately, but its really interesting to see that you got a 5.9% auto loan with your credit report. im a 641/639/606 FICO(EQ is way behind) and the only thing wrong with my report is one 5 year old late and an 83% balance to loan with my credit builder loan lol. those AUs must be doing you wonders! youre giving me a ton of hope with a car/mortgage in the future.

 

 

Message 13 of 34
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

@NormanFH youre not even kidding

Message 14 of 34
Adkins
Legendary Contributor

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

@emceelovin

1. I'm working on it, it hasn't even been a month yet. I've adjusted my budget and next month I'll be able to really start working on my utilization.

2. I'm not dropping the costco card since I'll need to be re-added again and the cardholder doesn't want to deal with it. The capital one is the pay down priority, and my goal is to get it to 75% by the end of next month.

3. I started working on the medical collection already, and I'm currently waiting on validation.

The dealership pulled a 656 or a 646 (I can't remember) when I applied for financing (I was pre-approved via capital one but I was looking for a lower rate than the 7.3% they gave me). I was working with the finance guy to get the payment where I wanted, and we went through ten lenders before we found the one that worked. At the time I only had the student loans, the discount tire card, and the AU on the citicard. All the other cards I got afterwards (like an idiot, I wish I'd found this forum first!), so my scores tanked.

Last HP 08-07-2023



Message 15 of 34
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

its not a fast process unfortunately. its all time based which sucks, but hopefully you can get some successful PFDs. if i was on this forum before i started rebuilding, i wouldnt have 7 INQs on EX, 5 on TU, and 4 on EQ. i didnt know anything about credit reports or that some banks are stupid and pull reports for new checking accounts. which should be illegal. that was three pulls alone on EX. i have two that are about to fall off on TU next year which is nice, but all of my EX pulls are on there until 2019 Smiley Sad. plus a stupid best buy app on TU, which i have no idea why i pulled it since i was nowhere NEAR repairing my horrible credit. you live you learn though. two years isnt that long of a time. chrysler capital pre-approved me for 45k, but it doesnt tell you interest rates obviously. i have an account with a credit union i left open purposely for the 2.5% auto loan rate, but thats out of my reach right now im sure. im going for a mortgage first. once i get that, im going on an app spree. i wont need anything for two years after that, so who cares.

Message 16 of 34
Adkins
Legendary Contributor

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

@emceelovin - Exactly! Live and learn, experience is painful sometimes. 🙁

Last HP 08-07-2023



Message 17 of 34
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

yeah, a nice two year PITA! lol after next year, ill have 7/4/3 hard INQs. i keep forgetting to try and get capital one to remove this one hard pull. i really had no idea what i was doing at all, and didnt even know secured card existed. plus the cards look the same on credit karma when you apply for them. it was my mistake, but i wasnt trying to take on huge amounts of credit. i had no credit cards. i just wanted any no annual fee card to be where im at now. that would take my hard INQs to 6/3/2 next year which would be nice, but i cant see them removing that inquiry. two years will be gone before you know it. like i said, i just want a mortgage. after that, i dont care abou INQs at all. im gonna pull as many of the cards i want until i get denied and let my report just fix itself after a couple years. as long as i have most of the cards i want, ill be fine.

Message 18 of 34
Adkins
Legendary Contributor

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

UPDATE!

 

FICO scores via credit check total today:

 

Experian - 680 (up from 644)

Equifax - 669 (up from 615)

TransUnion - 657 (up from 626)

 

Loans

Student Loan 1 - $6560 left Aug '08

Student Loan 2 - $996 left Aug '08

Car Loan - $21K left Apr '17

Self Lender - $414 left Jun '17

 

Authorized User Accounts

Lowe's - $0/$8500 Jul '10

Costco Visa - $7126/$10500 Jul '16

Amazon Visa - $1108/$3000 Jul '17

Kohl's - $145/$1000 Aug '17

 

Credit Cards & Lines of Credit

Discount Tire - $0/$400 Aug '15

Capital One - $1621/$2000 May '17

Discover (Secured) - $54/$200 Jun '17

Fingerhut - $0/$700 Jun '17 ($400 credit line increase)

Lane Bryant - $25/$300 Aug '17

Overstock - $86/$250

 

New: (and not reporting yet)

NFCU Cash Rewards - $850/2800

Target Red Card - $0/500

 

Closed, but listed current:

Bank of America $0/$1500 Jun 1998

Federal Loans 1 & 2

 

Baddies:

- (1) 90 date late on each student loan, August 2015. 

- (1) medical collection $803, DOFD May 2012 PAID. In the process of being removed from TransUnion & Equifax.

- (1) medical collection $300 July 2017 PAID. REMOVED!

 

Experian is still my strongest score, since it's always had my discount tire account reporting correctly. The discount tire account is still missing from TransUnion and Equifax has old information, where it's showing $141/400 on utilization. I'm really happy the newer medical collection honored their agreement, I was worried I'd have to fight for the deletion. It was a big risk to pay the older collection before having the PFD letter in hand, but they wouldn't do it any other way and the company had an excellent history of doing exactly what they said. 

 

Still working on:

1. Balance ratios. Obviously some of the cards are getting used still. I've been working on utilization ratio first, then balance amounts. Getting the capital one card down from nearly maxed out helped immensely. I've got another big payment scheduled then I'm tackling the Amazon card.  (Not all my charges there, and there's a pending payment not posted yet). I've really curtailed my spending and concentrated on throwing extra money into payments. 

 

2. Personal loan & auto refinance. I'd like to get a personal loan to pay off the remaining card balances. I'm trying to talk the DH into doing the same for his cards. Not sure if we could get one big loan by combining both our incomes. I'll have to ask. I'm four months away from coming onto a year on my car loan, and I'm not sure if I'll get refinancing now. From what I've read, it's best to do that in the first six months. 

 

3. Gardening time! I need to get the accounts mature, regardless of whether I get the personal loan or not. 

 

I'm figuring on a drop in score wihen the two new accounts hit but I expect a bump since they'll help with utilization. I'm happy with the first two months of work so far. 

 

 


Last HP 08-07-2023



Message 19 of 34
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: My Rebuild aka Recovery from 20s Stupidity

You really don't have that much in CC balances to warrant getting a personal loan. Just buckle down and pay it off ASAP.  The need for a personal loan to pay off CCs is more often than not the need to fix your budget.

 

Send a goodwill letter on that student loan late every month or two. Sometimes they get tired of you asking and will remove it.

 

Nice job so far and good luck!

Message 20 of 34
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