@Anonymous wrote:
Not sure if I did the right thing, today I started using Lexington law firm but now after hiring them I'm not really sure if they can help me.
My score is about 602 across the boards I have three collection combined for 650$ total but I'm making payments on, I have one 300$ charge off that's almost three years old and I have about 18 inquiries.
I have a 750$ cap one quicksilver card 60% utilization for the last few month
A 4000$ personal loan that I just got
And a 12000$car loan that's a year old.
I do have 100% payment history
My problem is my credit wont go up it always stays the same Witch means I can't get a better credit card.
I don't know that Lexington Law can do anymore than you can do for yourself. Essentially, they will dispute negative items on your credit report with each agency.
You are not the first person to ask this question, however:
Is Lexington Law good?
You may want to check out the Rebuilding Your Credit forum where folks who are rebuilding discuss their work on improving their credit score.
To improve your score, it's really important to know and understand what goes into making your FICO. Remember 35% of your score is dependent on your payment history, 30% on the amounts owed, 10% for credit mix, 10% for new credit, 10% for credit mix, and 15% for length of credit.
Payment history represents a large chunk. I applaud your current 100% payment history, but what's hurting you in this category are your collections and charge, which indicate late/no payment for a period of time. I don't know if you negotiated pay for delete of these collections amounts for your collections, or if it is too late to do so. Continue to pay your obligations on time, and pay off those collections. Over time, the effects of these derogatories go lessen.
The other large chunk is the the amounts owed, and your utilization on your credit card is quite high. Typically, you can optimize this portion with 3 cards, allowing 1 report a balance of <8.99% monthly. Given your credit score, you may have to consider getting a secured credit card, which can graduate to a unsecured card in order to get to 3 cards.
You have a mix of credit, including installment loans and a credit card. You haven't mention how old your credit is, so it's hard to tell your score is affected by that. Finally, you have several inquiries with may be hurting you in the new credit portion of your score.
I hope that helps. Rebuilding your FICO score can take a long time when you have some baddies on your record. Some things you can do now (lower uitilization) and keep doing (paying your bills, letting accoutns age), and some things will take a while (accounts aging, derogatories falling off your report, etc.)
Often, folks will say it's a marathon and not a sprint, but I think it's more of a slog, which can be fun and frustrating all at the same time.
