how fast could i see a significant change

[Anonymous]

I know things vary, my question is in general terms how much could I see my score go up, under the following conditions---   Current score- 589 My chptr 7 bankruptcy just disharged yesterday

                                           My plan is one car loan and 2 secured cards

                                            the cards will be kept at 15% balances and the

                                            car loan (8K)  I will put 4k towarrds the car loan after 3 months then

                                            just continue to pay the normal mnthly payment  the only other open account

                                            will be student loan which will be paid on time and I will have the loan down

                                            to 1/2 the high credit limit by years end. Under this senario what I could I

                                            reasnable expect to see as far as a credit score increase. 

[llecs]

YMMV. Adding the car loan won't help your score. In fact, you could take a hit for it. If you have no open CCs reporting, then adding a couple will help your score. If you have no CC COs with a balance, then adding a couple CCs will bump your FICO scores 20+ easily, with more over the next 3-6 months as the new credit wears off. You'd want to keep your CCs reporting at $0 with one reporting a small balance less than 9%.

[Anonymous]

Thanks  very much for the advice, I wanted to get the car laon so I would have a mix of accounts not just ccs, and I thought paying 1/2 of the balnce after several months would help because of utilization scoring.  and also help in building payment history. I want to get an fha loan 24 months after bk. I would have the car loan payed off by then.

am I wrong ? also thanks for the good advice on what balance to mantain on the ccs. 

[llecs]

If you have any open installment loans, like your SL, then your mix of credit is satisfied. Adding more like a car loan wouldn't help any. Also, the point impact of having an installment vs. not having an installment is very minimal. I just paid off my last loan, a car, and EQ went up by about 7 pts and TU went down by a few. There were only minor CC util changes to the report between pulls, which was about 3 days apart.

Also, installment utilization impact on your FICO score is very minimal. The loan that was just paid went from $5k+ to $0 in one month and the org. amt was just over $25k.

[smallfry]

Don't plan on a car loan helping at all. I mean if you need a car then by all means. I have paid half of an original 24K balance in less than 9 months on my latest car loan and it is still negative reason number three on my TU. Go figure. Installment balances too high.