Hello, all:
Currenty, I have a score somewhere in the upper 600 range, built up from a toilet rating in October 2014. I'm turning 24 next month, my oldest account will be 6 years old in August (first student loan, with a total of 5 reported student loan accounts on my report), I have a 100% on time payment history (and will take pains to keep it that way), I have 4 credit cards with a total credit line of $9,700 (just got the 4th with a $5,000 credit line) and keep the utilization rates below 20% almost all the time, mostly below 10% and pay them off every month.
Overall, I'm about $40,000 in debt with $20,000 in student loans, $12,600 in an auto loan, $7000 in a personal loan (more about this below), and around $500 in credit card debt any given month. I have 2 derogatory remarks on each credit report, though there is one that only shows up on Equifax, and another that doesn't show up on Equifax but reports to the other two. They all come from August 2010, and seem to be associated with a hospital stay, but I know little about them.
My main questions have to do with the derogatory remarks and personal loan. I got the personal loan actually for my mom and stepfather, and they give me the base payment every month. I tried to dissuade them from this because it came with an insanely high interest rate (33.96%, yes, you read that right), but I live with them and really didn't have much of a choice. I currently am planning to pay this off early, and then pocket the payment because I really hate having this nonsense on my credit report. It feels one step above a payday loan and if I pay it off with my current early payment plan, I can profit several thousand dollars in the long run. My question is if paying this off early will positively or negatively impact my score. It seems either way it wouldn't make much of an impact as I have 10 other accounts, and it's a younger account.
In regards to the derogatory remarks, I would like to dispute them, but I have little documentation. Any hospital bills should have been covered by father and his insurance, but my father has since passed away, and I wasn't really thinking about my credit until a while after that. Right now my plan is to wait until August of this year to dispute as the Collections Agencies don't seem to care about the debt and I don't want to remind them of it before Washington State's statute of limitations runs out that month. I have received zero communication concerning it, at least not since I moved across the country to my mom's for school (I don't know about before, my father was known for hiding bills and not paying them from time to time). I'm just not sure if it would be worth it then as it would only be 18 months at that point until they fall off from age and I've heard these can have minimal impact on scoring, especially after so many years and a clean credit report since then. However, I'd also like to open a couple more revolving accounts (2-3, hopefully getting an Amex Gold Card with that) in the next 18-24 months as I want to maximize account age over time and I figure getting the accounts I want and sticking to them over the course of time will help maximize my score.
My overall goal is to get into a good mortgage within 4-6 years, if not sooner if I play my cards right.
