Rebuilding.. how can I increase my score faster?

[Anonymous]

I've been cleaning up my credit after a lot of trouble when I was younger with not paying my bills. My score was as low as 490 at one point, however, It is currently 560-590. I have had several items removed and have been disputing as well. I still have a few collections (charge offs that are unpaid) but I am working with them to remove for PIF.

I opened up a Fingerhut Freshstart account and was approved for $130. I kept the account for 60 days and they graduated me into a $200 revolving line of credit. I also have a $250 Secured Visa from USAA that I just opened. How long will it take for Fingerhut to report and should I use the account and PIF right away, or wait? 

I want to raise my score as quickly as possible so that I will be in a better position for buying a car. Are there any tricks I can use to do this? Is it possible to raise my score 100 points in 6 months?

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I've been cleaning up my credit after a lot of trouble when I was younger with not paying my bills. My score was as low as 490 at one point, however, It is currently 560-590. I have had several items removed and have been disputing as well. I still have a few collections (charge offs that are unpaid) but I am working with them to remove for PIF.

I opened up a Fingerhut Freshstart account and was approved for $130. I kept the account for 60 days and they graduated me into a $200 revolving line of credit. I also have a $250 Secured Visa from USAA that I just opened. How long will it take for Fingerhut to report and should I use the account and PIF right away, or wait? 

I want to raise my score as quickly as possible so that I will be in a better position for buying a car. Are there any tricks I can use to do this? Is it possible to raise my score 100 points in 6 months?

Thanks for any help you can give.

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100 pts in 6 months will almost be impossible.   set up an account on credit karma and see if fingerhut is reporting to the CA.  write down all the baddies you have and try to remove them if possible.  a good start would be 2-3 cards and throw in a store card just for the mix (target/walmart).

[Anonymous]

I went from 556 to 622 since November. Pay down Cc debt to under 30% and dispute baddies that could be errors...

You can do it! Good luck.

[gdale6]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I've been cleaning up my credit after a lot of trouble when I was younger with not paying my bills. My score was as low as 490 at one point, however, It is currently 560-590. I have had several items removed and have been disputing as well. I still have a few collections (charge offs that are unpaid) but I am working with them to remove for PIF.

I opened up a Fingerhut Freshstart account and was approved for $130. I kept the account for 60 days and they graduated me into a $200 revolving line of credit. I also have a $250 Secured Visa from USAA that I just opened. How long will it take for Fingerhut to report and should I use the account and PIF right away, or wait? 

I want to raise my score as quickly as possible so that I will be in a better position for buying a car. Are there any tricks I can use to do this? Is it possible to raise my score 100 points in 6 months?

Thanks for any help you can give.

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You want at minimum 3 bankcards and 1 store card (you already have this with FH), so open 2 more bankcards, I would try Cap-1 for an unsecured card before going for more secureds. You want only 1 of your cards reporting a balance of no more than 9% of its individual CL the rest at 0, this gives you better FIco scoring. Its always best to PIF any CC balances so you dont pay interest. Welcome to my Fico and good luck moving forward

[juniornj23]

It all depends of what you have on you credit report
my wife got 120 point in 5 moths she has 5 collection pfd plus UT down from 98 to 5% and 2 missing payment delete so try hard and make sure your credit report look like baby face clean

[TURNERHOOVER]

Rebuilding takes time. 

[Anonymous]

It could be possible. My friend was able to make a huge jump like that by removing Collections and Charge Offs along with responsibly managing a couple of cards. I figure that removing those negatives helped the most. 

I feel like it is easier climbing up from horrible scores when you are young with a few bad things. My friend went from the 520s-low 600s quickly but after that, the rebuilding to 700 took a good bit of time.

[StartingOver10]

Really rebuilding is two fold as you can see from the posts above:  repairing the baddies plus getting new positively reporting accounts.  If you only repair the baddies without also having the positive accounts it will be a long slow process. You need both to move forward more quickly.  Utilitzation is critical to building your score fast as mentioned above. When you have lower credit limits it is easy to load up your credit lines (you can do this with one tank of gas on a low limit card!) and hurt your score so be cautious with the amounts you actually charge and what you let report.