Hello All!
I've been lurking on this site now for about a month and reading EVERYTHING! First, I have to say there is a LOT of great information, and second, I wish I found this place two years ago when I filed my BK.
The short version of my story: I filed Ch 7 BK October 2010 and it was discharged Feb 2011. I have 9 credit cards now since my BK filing; two are for my business, and 7 are personal. They are the usual suspects - FP, Capital One, Credit One, Barclays, Merrick, etc. I have approximately $4,700 with those combined cards, you know, the low limit ones, but two are $1,000, but the annuals and monthly fees suck, so I want to get rid of those this coming year. I'm at about 80% utilization on my cards, as I launched a business, and used the monies to fund the website building, etc so I do know I need to get that down ASAP. I work right now, PT, as well as doing my own business, so I don't (currently) make a lot of money. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I moved back in with my parents when I filed, so I could get my life back together. I want to know what your recommendations would be for me as these are my issues:
- I want to close some of these cards by the middle to end of 2013, even if my FICO's take a hit, I don't care;
- I will be getting some tax $ as well as a decent amount of $ in June, so I'm not sure if I should a. pay off a coupe of cards that I can with the money I'm getting, or if I should pay them all down below 30% utilization with the money?
- I am going to get a share secured loan from my credit union so that I can have an installment on my credit, as well as get one of their secured cards (in the summer) so that when I close those other cards, I can have a card that has a decent interest rate, and will eventually be a Prime Card, versus these sub cards I currently have;
- I've had two car loans in my past, and they were all paid on time and my most recent car was paid off in 2007, so I have no car payment;
- I have student loans MILLIONS of dollars worth
just kidding, but it feels like it; I have a B.A., and MBA, and even with scholarships & grants; work-study, and other work I did, I still ended up with a substantial amount in loans. I'm currently on IBR (income-based repayment), so I don't have to pay anything for most of them; however, I do have a university direct loan (it wasn't a government loan, so it couldn't be included when I consolidated all of my student loans) ; it is showing late, because they reduced my payment amount, BUT, they don't reflect that on the credit report. They said that anything that is less than the amount that is owed per month is considered late??? I am looking to try and see what I can do about that, because currently, I can't afford to make the amount they want, but I should after I pay off my state taxes (I owed from one year, and of course got the bill after I filed BK) I've been paying on that, and it should be paid off by March/April, so I can allocate THAT money towards the university direct loan payment, it will still be less than they want, but again, I'm open for suggestions. - Finally, I received two of my free annual credit reports: transunion and equifax (for some reason, I couldn't get my Experian one, so I'll have to contact them and pay for it, I know I am well over my free timeframe, as I ordered them last year in October, so I don't know why I couldn't get it???) I have some accounts showing in the closed section, and while most of them say "included in bankruptcy" there are a few that are saying they were charged off, but I know they were IIB. What do you recommend I do about that? Should I contest them or not? I think what may have happened is that they charged them off, but then sold them to CA's, I'm not sure, but that's what I think. I had a "nice" conversation with this CA last year for my Neiman Marcus account; told him to contact my attorney as it was IIB. He insisted to try to fight with me, so I just hung up.
At this point, my FICO is (from CreditKarma) 628. I don't know about the others. I'm assuming my real scores are likely in the 600-630 realm, but that I don't know for sure. My most recent hit was for a Fingerhut account in September. I have 6 hard inquires on my reports and about a dozen or so softs from my current credit companies. I'm certain my FICO is taking a beating from the high % of utilization, so that's one of the first things I plan to attack. I appreciate any and all responses, and hopefully, by the beginning of 2014, I can be in a better place. I don't want to say I don't want credit anymore, but I definitely want to keep it to a minimum. If I had two cards with $2,500 limits, I would be fine, since that's all I really need, and feel I can manage at this point.
Thanks everybody, and I'm looking forward to your recommendations!
You seem to be on the right track, keep your Barclays card paid down and keeping asking for CLI's every 6 mths and you should be fine.
I also had a BK discharged in Jan 2009 and have pretty much the same line up you have.
However, I also have a Jared's card - and they just increased me to $15k so it really helps with utilization.
Barclays grows. Started at $1100 with them a year ago and now I'm at $3700.
I agree 1000% with your strategy of closing FP and other subprimes. I plan to do so this year too before the AF hits.
You might consider getting a GE card to help with utilization because it grows with you. Wait until you get your scores up though through the Barclay's card you have now.
But two things stand out: 1) all the accounts you have that were included in the BK should read iib with zero balance. If it is reporting anything else, dispute it as inaccurate. Dispute directly with the vendor/creditor to get it to report right.
The second thing: Credit Karma doesn't do FICO scores. It is a FAKO score (that is - non FICO) that doesn't really have any relationship to FICO scoring at all. My FICO here is 719 as of Nov 25 and the exact same date it was 706 at Credit Karma. But it doesn't matter because the scoring formulas are totally different and don't correlate at all- the only thing CK is good for is checking to see when your cards report and the reported balances and that sort of thing (good details). Ignore the score part.
Thanks for responding StartingOver10. I know it's a tough path and road, but as long as I don't make the same mistakes again, I should be ok. Hence the reason I really don't want a lot of credit cards. I agree, I will work to get all my balances down. I should be able to pay my Barclay's off in February, so that will help when they review my account (I think that will be 6 months by then). My limit with them is only $350, so I'll have a ways to go to get to higher limits, but to your point I'm working on lowering my utilization and paying some off, so that by the summer I can be down to only 4 cards, and then do as I said before with getting the accounts with my credit union.
When you said to contact the creditor directly, do you recommend that I call them on the phone, or write to their credit department? I like to have written documentation of things to CYA, but if it's better to call, then I can do that and then follow up with a letter. I'm assuming that disputing with the CA is the wrong thing to do? 
Once I get that those accounts taken care of that should have been IIB, I'll pull all of my credit reports again in the summer and pay for the scores so I can see where I really am, in terms of all my scores. I have no delusions, but if I could end the year in the 670-690 range, I'd be happy!
"If it was a collections account before your filing date they can report. However, if they sold or assigned your account to collections after your filing date you can get the entire tradeline removed."
Oh, that's definitely good to know! I will have to look at the dates on the CR, because that would be awesome if the whole tradelines could be removed; however, with my luck that won't be the case. Alright, well, I'll pour through the two reports I got, and then write letters so I can get them out by the beginning of the year and be on the road to making sure everything is straight.
Thanks again! I love reading all of this stuff now; it's a bit addictive! Like I said, I wish I had known about/found this site when I filed! My attorney was ok, but there is a lot of great and useful information here, more than he ever told me!
Just a note- if you owed that state tax bill prior to your bankruptcy, and it was just missed, you can stll do an amendment and get it included in there. Call your bankruptcy attorney about that. Also, many times they have to pay you back for the payments you have made in error. I was given back a lot of money for bills I kept paying thinking that I could keep them out of the filing. However, they still went through, and they all had to give back the paymets made within a certain time frame. I would definitely check in to that.
Starting Score: EQ 416 TU 498 EX 468 Lender Fico's July 2012
@jandj80 wrote:Just a note- if you owed that state tax bill prior to your bankruptcy, and it was just missed, you can stll do an amendment and get it included in there. Call your bankruptcy attorney about that. Also, many times they have to pay you back for the payments you have made in error. I was given back a lot of money for bills I kept paying thinking that I could keep them out of the filing. However, they still went through, and they all had to give back the paymets made within a certain time frame. I would definitely check in to that.
Thank you! I'll definitely check it out.