From 485 to 700 in four years: A story of fico redemption.

[Anonymous]

In July of 2005 I was arrested for buying a bag of marijuana and was sentenced to 10 months in county jail.  Lo and behold every credit account I had went to **bleep** while I was rotting in the cage.  About a year after I got out, I opened a secured credit card with a $200 money order to Applied Bank.  During next three years I opened 2 more secured cards, then two unsecured cards (300$ limits).  I watched my scores every month via truecredit.com and as of this month my highest score is a 703!  

Some caveats:

I have paid off 5 of the 8 collections that were out on me so far.  This included cable, cell, utilities, etc.  I am not sure exactly how paying these off affected my score, but I know for a fact some of them helped.  Because some collection agencies will update their data every month, and that is very damaging.

I created  lots of student loan debt during this time, but I have yet to graduate and/or make a payment on this debt.  However, these accounts all report "paying as agreed" month after month.  I imagine this has helped my score as well. 

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Thanks for reading my first post!  I look forward to learning mucho more on these forums.  Any questions or comments are much appreciated!

PETE

[blacklotus]

That's scary.  When I went to High School you would get a slap on the wrist- well either that or like a $50 fine for something like that.  Then during Reaganomics there was a war on drugs now it is considered a semi-legal substance.  I don't know if legalizing this stuff is good or bad I do know that it does nothing for your finances!

Good job on the credit improvement.  My big downfall was my student loans!!!

EDIT:  I smoked but never inhaled (I'm a Democrat).lol...