My progress, and a few questions

[skakid812]

First off, thank you everyone, this forum has been GREAT!

Started with a 550 or something like that, I finally signed up for the Fico monitoring and it shows 641 Equifax, I'm excited because I wasnt expecting this at all, but I know I have a long road still.  All I've really done in this short time was get 3 more credit cards, my first really other than the 1 that screwed up my credit.

I should note that I am 22, my oldest account is only 4 1/2 years old.  I had an auto loan with positive payments for 3 years, I trade in that car and now have a new auto loan that has been reporting for 1 year, with positive payments.  I guess what I'm really concerned with, is that since I am so young, I feel like my ability to get my score higher is very limited due to account age. 

So now I have the following:

Walmart: 350

Capital one: 500

Capital one: 500

Express: 250

HHGregg: 1200

Current utilization is around 50% which I'm paying off very aggressive.  I plan to have it down to 10% in a few months, one of the cards has been closed due to late payments (Old navy) so I'm not sure if paying that one off has any significant effect (compared to an active card)

I also have 1 collection, appears to be medical.  I honestly have never heard from them, and sent my first PFD to them hoping to get it off ASAP

Other than getting my utilization down, and hopefully getting this PFD done, is there anything else I can do?  I sent GW letters to some of my cards that have a few lates, with no success.  I'm thinking about doing another round of that as well. 

[Shogun]

Good plan on paying down the util on those cards.  Paying the Old Navy off will help, it's an OC and still factors into your util.  Your best plan is to garden what you have, and try to GW those lates.  It's just going to take a little time.

[skakid812]

Does being so young hurt though?  With the few mistakes that I have made, I feel it just makes it even harder to obtain good credit (in the short run) until I have 10 more years on my account.  Then again, I have no idea how my credit will look when my util is 7% so I guess we will see. 

[baller4life]

Your score will increase with you dropping the util considerably and your accounts age. Also GWing those lates and getting that collection deleted with cause your score to skyrocket. 

[skakid812]

I'm really hopeful for the collection dropping.  I sent them a PFD letter, using a template from here.  I re-worded it so it doesnt sound extremely demanding, it was kind of demanding with the original template.