Hi everyone. I just wanted to say hello and get some opinions on how my credit repair/ rebuilding is looking.
I'm 35 and I've had my share of credit downfalls. Irresponsible credit card use in college, collections when I was younger, not realizing how important it was to build my credit back up, etc.
We are renting a house that is in forclosure & I'm hoping to repair my credit enough to purchase a home before that happens. When I decided to start working on my credit score, I got myself a Capital One secured card ($200 limit) & I think I'm up to 16 months of payment history with them. I have a single late payment (30 days) back in June which I have asked Capital One to remove as a courtesy & they agreed. My partner had just been diagnosed with cancer & had two surgeries in 3 months A few of the bills just slipped my mind around that time. Four months ago I opened an Old Navy card account (I was pretty suprised when I was approved in-store. I honestly didn't hink I would be. Unfortunately, I just recently learned the importance of utilization rates... Up until recently, I charged pretty close to the limit on both cards and then paid them in full every month.
Aside from the one late Capital One payment, I have a couple negative marks that I'm having trouble clearing up:
I have a civil court judgement from 2008. A previous land lord sued me & won. The judgement has been paid in full, but it is not reporting as such. I have disputed the inacuary to Experian, but it was not updated.
I also have an acocunt with Verizon which went into collections. This one is a bit tricky. I currently have a verizon account but there was some osrt of error made at some point which created a second account without me knowing. The first account was closed without payment & I was never billed for it. Once I was made aware of the account, I paid it off & it reports as being paid on the CRBs, but is there some sort of way to make it go away? Looking at the payment history on the account, it looks horrible to me. No payments were made on it because I didn't know it existed.
That's it really. I have no collections, no charge offs, no bankruptcies. But my positive credit history is limited. My FICO score is probably around 620-640 currently. I have a stable work history & about 10K in savings, but I'm having a hard time raising my credit scores. Perhaps I'm just too impatient, or perhaps the high balances have hurt me. Should I try to increase my credit lines, or should I just use them very little? Sorry for the newbie questions, but I'm hoping I won't make things worse by tryomg to help things along.
Thanks for the reply. I paid the civil judgment via wage garnishment. $7900 worth. I received a letter from my HR rep which is when I was first made aware of the suit & the judgment. I did not have an attorney. I never even went to court. I guess a call to the court is in order.
I do have some paperwork with the attorney's info. Once I got the letter from my HR rep, I called around and got copies of the judgment & the paperwork where the garnishment was filed as well. I was never notified that I was being sued, or that a judgment had been made.
The suit was from an old land lord. I had moved out prior to fulfilling the lease terms and although we had made a verbal agreement & I moved out on what I thought were good terms, he sued me for the remainder of the lease afterward. I learned my lesson on that one for sure! Having the whole thing vacated would be ideal.