New Here, Need help repairing my credit

[DonnyP05]

I'm looking to repair my credit. I was once young and opened up many charge accounts, then lost my job. From there everything went sour, which is what led me here today. I am looking to purchase my first house in the next year or so and would like all help I can get in making this process smooth. I have known grown up from that day and age and now have a family to support as we just had our first child. It's time to take hold of this and fix it for good.

I am new to all these terms and processes. I have done much reading here the past few days though. I have already pulled my report from annualcreditreport.com awhile back. The most reason report I have is from Experian from 9-7-2012.

EX 546 - 21 Accounts total. 18 derogatory (charge-offs, Collections, etc.) 3 in good standing. One State tax lien (Already paid). 92% Util (If I read it correctly)

Most of my accounts are quite old and many will fall off by this time next year. The other accounts I have could be paid in full, as they are mostly medical and cell phone bills

Where do I begin in starting to repair this? What reports, tools, monitors,programs do I need to purchase or look into? I am totally new to all of this. I hear people talking about their FICO scores and getting weekly/monthly score watch updates, talking about GW letters and PFD's and PID's.

I have tried reading all I can on the stickies but I just don't know where to begin. Can anyone point me in a direction to begin? Tell me what programs I need to sign up for? What reports or tools I should get?

Too sum up this post, I am a compete noob when it comes to trying to repair my credit and a helping hand to guide me in this process would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

If you need any more information from me, please just ask.

[DonnyP05]

Most of my accounts are from CC's and store cards. Then those turned into collections after awhile. Along with medical bills, Verizon Wireless and Progressive insurance. 

3 of those collection accounts are from traffic violations and have all been paid in full. They show, account paid, was a collection next to each. Should I GW these to get them removed? If so, how do I go about doing GW's?

Every other accounts has either been charged off or is In Colletion. Like stated in above post, most of these accounts will be falling off by this time next year.

Just thought I would add a little more details about each account to this thread. If you need anything else, let me know.

[Shogun]

Hello and welcome to the forums.  Congrats on coming here to be more financially responsible.  Let's break yoursituation down into manageable categories.  

First let's go with paid versus unpaid.   How many unpaid do you have?  How old are they.  Do you know the DOFD of those accounts?

Paid accounts will need to have GW letter to get them off of your CR.

So post some info on your unpaids and let's get started.

[DonnyP05]

Thanks for the help!!!!! I will get this information updated shortly.

Would I find this on the experience report that I saved to my computer? Is there a better place to get this information from?

Also where would I find the DOFD? Which would it be? 

Sorry I'm still new to this.

[Shogun]

The ones you got from annualcreditreport.com wIll have the most info.   DOFD will be listed on EQ.  TU and EX will list the date they fall off.  Just count back 7 year + 180 days from that to determine your DOFD.

[Anonymous]

Don't apologize - we were all there once.

You can pull three reports at AnnualCreditreport.com. You've got your Experian, it sounds like. Did you also get your Transunion and Equifax?

Your experian report is a good place to start, though. There won't be a Date of First Delinquency, but you should see a line under "Status" that will read "This account is scheduled to continue on record until Apr 2016" or somesuch. That will at least give you an idea how old the account is, and you can use that to see what they're claiming is DOFD in each case.

[DonnyP05]

Yes I have my EX report. I have a trains union one but it's about 4 months old.Will thahostile be useful being that it's 4 months old. I don't think I have my EQ report anywhere. I did use annual credit report to get them and now i can't get them until the year has passed again, well for free that is.

I will look up this information and post the results

[Shogun]

Sounds good get to posting.  Just remember to leave off any personal info.  

[DonnyP05]

17 unpaid accounts. Some are double because they were charged off from OC to CA's

These are the OC's listed below

2 Capital 1 CC's with DOFD's of 10/2005

Circuit City CC with DOFD of 06/2006

Old Navy CC with DOFD of 05/2006

Best Buy CC with DOFD of 10/2005

Kay 's CC with DOFD of 05/2006

Maurices CC with DOFD of 2/2006

These are the CA's

PYOD LLC OC was Old Navy. DOFD of 11/2005

3 Asset Assurance LLC with OC's of Best Buy, Maurices, Captial One with DOFD's of 02/2006 03/2006 and 10/2005

4 Medical Bills with DOFD's of 07/2009 02/2008 09/2007 09/2005

Progressive Insuarnce Collection with DOFD of  02/2006

Verizon Collection with DOFD of 10/2005

Hopefully this is what you were looking for and it has all of the information that you need on it. I hope I didn't give away too much information or list them incorrectly. Hopefully I listed it in a format that's easy for you to understand as well. 

According to my report, by this time next year 10 accounts will be off of my report. Not really sure how that works or what happens then.

Let me know if I added this information for you correctly.

[Shogun]

Well I have good news and I have bad news.   Bad news first.   Those are some bad TLs.   Now the good news.  They are old, almost past the CRTP and I'd bet past the SOL of your state.  I'd look that up if I were you.

You have a couple that are a bit newer and those are medical.  There's some extra methods on those that we can discuss later

Now.. which ones of these are paid?   Which ones still have balances?