hello everyone! i have been reading this forum for a bit over a month now and just signed up. this is a great source of support for people with damaged credit and i am grateful for any help i can get with my credit rebuilding issues. i will break this first post down into a few sections. first what my credit goals are, second what my history and current credit status is, and third questions about what i should do to get myself in the right direction to achieve my goals. thanks again to anyone who may be able to help me out.
1- my credit goals
i have never had very good credit due to negligence on my part ever since i got my first $500 credit card in college years ago (i am now 37). around 3 years ago i decided to take a look at my credit report through a credit report company online and found about a dozen collections. i had a good amount of extra money at the time so i decided to pay some of them off. about half of them i believe. although i paid many of them off im not sure if i did it the right way.
i now have a son (just turned two yesterday) and over the last half year have finally started to grow up. i live in hollywood and its very easy for people to just go on partying endlessly but i think having a kid finally got me to want to act my age and i have become more ambitious and responsible at heart this year. i am working hard to create a future for myself and my son where financial hardship will not be an issue.
im not sure if this is my fico score or fako score but i have a score i managed to find through a free credit reporting agency online and it is 556. i was not able to get my report from this site but i will get into that in the second part. i would like to be able to finance a car in 6 months at a prime apr (nothing too expensive maybe a 4-5 year old mustang 10k or so) and would also like to buy a condo in las vegas (there are some ive been looking at that cost around 15k) for maybe 1-2k dowm with a low apr and maybe a 5-10 year mortgage. at this point (in 6 months) i would also like to be qualified to get 2 unsecured credit cards that i will want to keep for a long time and get periodic cli increases with that have good apr rates and rewards. in 2-3 years time i would like to be able to buy a house in the valley for around 3-400k with a good 30 year low apr mortgage. thats about it for the part of my post about my goals i suppose.
2- my current credit status
like i said i have been able to pull my score through a free trial at a popular online credit report agency. it is 556. i tried to get my score here but it didnt allow me to because i didnt answer the security questions about my history accurately. the strange thing is when i was asked some security questions at that annual credit report site the same sort of questions had come up and i was not able to get my equifax report there either (its either experian or equifax, whichever one this site uses is the one i think i cant get my report on). the strange thing is both sites asked me which company i had a mortgage with and how much the mortgage was for. and i never have had a mortgage in my life. so i wasnt able to get my report on this site and i could only see my other two agency reports on the other site.could someone have used my identity to open a mortgage? and if so why would they use mine since i have such a bad credit history? anyway if someone could let me know the correct way to follow up on this id appreciate it.
anyway on to what i was able to see from the other two credit bureaus. theres only 3 items on each. as i recall from 3 years ago when i payed off more than half of the badddies on my report of over a dozen baddies there were a few that were reaching the 7 year mark so i assume some just dropped off. so i have 3 items on my report they are all from time warner cable and i belive are all the same unpaid bill from late spring 2011 when i shut off the cable with an unpaid balance remaining. so if this is true i think maybe the debt just got passed from one agency to another and maybe i can get 2 of them dropped off? then deal with the 1 actual one that remains? any help here would be appreciated. heres how the debt looks (all 3 are from time warner cable)
- CBA collection bureau. date opened 1/1/2012 balance $276
-Enhanced Recovery Co. date opened 5/1/2012 $395
-Enhanced Recovery Co. date opened 5/1/2012 $367
i called enhanced recovery and gave them my name including middle initial and my city i live in and they said they could find a file on me? i could only get the first 4 numbers of the acount on all 3 reported baddies as the 8 digit account numbers appear as 1234xxxx. thats all i found on my reports so far
3-what do i do now to get on track?
I have just put down a 99 dollar deposit on a $200 secured card with capitol one at the beginning of dec. called them yesterday and they said it was sent out yesterday so i should get it within a week. i read credit repair for dummies and read that opening a secured loan with my bank might be a good idea. ie: give them $500 and they give me a 1 year loan for $500 plus a small apr? should i get one more secured credit card? and should i increase my cl with my cards so i have a good credit limit history 6 months from now. how high should i raise them to? 500? 1000? at what point should i be eligible for a target merchandise card? what steps should i take to get rid of the 3 baddies that seem like theyre all the same 1 item from time warner? how should i go about getting my report from this site when theres false information about a mortgage in my initial security questions? is getting a car loan in 6 months (and maybe a $15 mortgage for a condo in LV) a good idea? why could Enhanced recovery find my collections files? any help would be appreciated thanks!
