A little bit of background info: Our main goal is increasing our credit scores enough to buy a home. We are currently mid-20's; in our early 20's, we discovered that even with no credit history, we were able to qualify for a few credit cards. We were irresponsible and now, every single item on our credit report(s) is bad. Thankfully, we don't have *that* much on the reports and the monetary value is not a substantial amount. Our scores are extremely low, both Beacons right around the 500 mark.
We would love to stop renting and buy a home of our own, but after a lender ran our reports and gave us our scores, we know we have a lot of work to do before making that a reality. Our tax return this year was far more than expected and we'd like to use some of that money towards paying off accounts, if it will increase our scores.
Here's an approximate breakdown of our reports:
Medical bills - $1000
Charge offs (from store credit cards) - $6500
Other negatives (but not listed as charged off; some of these accounts include collections from a previous apartment, student loans, etc.) - $6500
Which (if any) of these should I pay off in order to increase our scores? We plan on opening secured credit cards, keeping the utilization below 20%, and paying on time each month. What else can we do to increase our scores quickly?
