So I have been concerned about my credit for years now as i have been very careless with paying my bill durning most of my 20's. I have been screwing around having fun most of my twenties and about 4 years ago finally started making a decent steady paycheck. I am now looking to buy a home and get a decent rate on an auto loan. My credit score is 554 on experian. So I guess my questions will be what should be my first steps in raising my credit score. I will give you some more info on my situation and specify certain questions.
I have 16k in Student loan debt that is in defferment that i will start paying on in July. These are 4 different loans and each one of them has about 1k of interest built up on them. They have been in defferment throughout half of my twenties so the debt to credit ratio on those look very bad. How badly is this affecting my score? Will i see a major jump if i start paying these down?
I have around 6 or 7 baddies in collections 2 of them are medical at around 1k. The rest are random utility bills and stupid things that i didnt pay while moving around in a college town. Should i start sending pay for delete letters to these? a couple of them havent reported since 2012. what should i do with those? dispute them?
There is one charge off on my account for $787. I obtained it in october 2008 but didnt get a charge off until 2012. It is a Continental Finance card. From my understanding this has a cease and disist order from the FDIC and I have disputed it with equifax sending them a .pdf of the cease and disist order. Should i expect this to fall off my account? How much would a charge off from 2012 dropping off affect my score?
I also had an auto loan from 2010 to 2013 that i have paid in full. It has 7 30 day lates on it. I just sent a goodwill letter asking for deletion of those and will continue to send them until they are knocked off. Its a small town bank, Im hoping they can find some sympathy.
I have about 10 inquiries. most of them current. But i did not get a vehicle as i couldnt get a rate lower than 23% (yowza!). This being the main catylst in me taking the journey to improve my credit.
I love this forum and hope i am doing everything correctly to fix my young adult follies. Im tired of living with no credit and want to start a comfortable life. I hope i am on the right path. Any and all advice and constructive critisism is appreciated.
Starting Score: EQ 8/14 545
For the Continental Finance/First Bank of Deleware Charge off.
DOFD is 06/2012
I had that card in Arizona but i live in Illinois now. So im not wure which SOL to go by. Illinois is 5 years
They where ordered to cease and desist in Dec 2008 for fraudlent charges among other things. They actually owe ME money according to FDIC. They are also supposed to delete the tradlines of certain customers. Im pretty sure i fall under that order.
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/press/2008/FBD_Notice_of_Charges.pdf
Another order: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/enforcement/2008-10-03.pdf
The final order: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/enforcement/2008-12-03.pdf
The other collections.
4 of the DOFDs are from 2012
1 from 2010
and a recent one from 2014
Im not sure on the SOL on these. 3 of them where from arizona, two of them from Indiana. I assume 3 years for the Arizona ones. if utility bills are open ended accounts.
6 years for the two in indiana.