topic Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity" in Rebuilding Your Credit

My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 18:23:00 GMT

In order to make this journal easier to follow, I'll be using this first posting as a fluidly and regularly updated summary with links to tangent discussions on other threads or within this thread. This will include only the negative items I'm addressing (as well as any I've successfully closed) and a hopefully helpful summary of the action I took. Other things (being added as an authorized user, expanding credit diversity, etc) will not be summarized here but will be posted as "regular" updates on subsequent pages. To the best of my ability I'll add a quick note as to whether any favorable resolutions had a boost or, conversely, if anything related to these causes a dip.

UPDATE DATE: 7/11/14

LATE PAYMENTS

First National - three 30 day lates from 9/11, 5/12 and 12/12

No action yet taken
Plan to request goodwill deletions of these marks once my utilization is down to nearly nonexistent

Capital One - one 30 day late from 5/12

No action yet taken
Plan to request goodwill deletion of this mark once my utilization is down to nearly nonexistent (minor details here)
Goodwill letter sent 4/22 (to executive office)

SUCCESS! Received a letter from Cap One that this will be deleted

Credit One - one 30 day late from 5/12

No action yet taken
Plan to request goodwill deletion of this mark once my utilization is down to nearly nonexistent (minor details here
Goodwill letter sent 4/23 (to executive office)

DENIED It's one minor trangression from what's about to be 2 years ago, so it's a very minimal concern of mine. That said, I'm currently debating whether to reload and try again or use this as the springboard/spark I needed to finally cancel this card. It's my "worst" card by a mile and I wouldn't mind being rid of it and its fees.

Second Capital One - two 30 day lates from 3/12 and 6/12

No action yet taken
Plan to request goodwill deletions of these marks once my utilization is down to nearly nonexisten
Goodwill letter sent 4/22 (to executive office)

SUCCESS! Letter received that these lates will be deleted.

Student Loan - three 90 day lates from 4/10, 5/10 and 1/10 (these report four times given they were four distinct loans in a technical sense)

Goodwill letter sent March 2013 (to general customer service)

Result: DENIED

Second goodwill letter sent March 2014 (to executive)

Result: SUCCESS - all lates removed (details here)

This, shockingly, did not move the needle. Three 90 day lates each reporting four distinct times were removed and I didn't see an uptick.

COLLECTIONS/CHARGE OFFS/OTHER BADDIES

First National Account Closed 1/13 (heavy utilization)

Appealed 3/1/13 providing proof of income and paying balance in full

Result: SUCCESS (account reinstated)

I was not actively/diligently tracking my score during this time. I'll see if I can do some archivist work to figure out if I got a bump around this time.

First Premier Charge Off - $126 from March, 2012

Attempted PFD 3/21/14

Result: DENIED

Paid in full directly to FP 3/21/14
Goodwill letter emailed (general support) 3/22/14

Result: AWAITING

SUCCESS! I'm not quite sure how, but this has been removed from all three reports. Maybe it had to do with my letter nearly four months ago, but I doubt it. It's more likely grounded in internal data problems on their end, but I'll take it either way. No I just have to hope it's permanent!

"Uknown" Medical Colletion - $19 from March 2010 (detailed here)

Attempted PIF to OC 4/2/14 (secretary/clerk)

Result: DENIED

Attempted PFD to CA 4/2/14

Result: DENIED

Goodwill letter (with offer to PIF) sent to specific practice as well as hospital Corporate Responsibility Officer 4/2/14

Result: AWAITING

CA State Tax Lien - $1,700 dollars from 9/2010 (result of 2007 tax year)

Paid in Full March 2013 (lien released but not withdrawn)
Attempted Goodwill for withdrawal of lien via fax to FTB 3/3/14

Result: AWAITING

Attempted 2nd Goodwill for withdrawal 4/7 after not having heard on the 3/3 fax.

Result: DENIED

UTILIZATION

Given I'm in no immediate rush to improve my credit, I've decided to experiment medium-term with paying down balances to see what impact it has on scores. I'll try to account for other factors as they arise, but below is a running summary of how incremental paydowns/payoffs impact my score per SW. Dates are the report dates for the change in SW versus the day I made the payment. This methodical approach was inspired by THIS thread.

4/20: payment took a single card from 98% utilization to 60% utilization. This took my overall utilization from 84% to 76%

RESULT: 16 point increase (roughly 2 points per overall utilization improvement)

6/30: two payments posted taking me the neighborhood of 75% down to 50%.

RESULT: a 25 point increase (roughly 1 point per overall UTIL improvement on this round, so I had some diminishing returns here, but even if I can squeeze half a point per util drop from here on in I'll be ecstatic as that will push me firmly into the 700 club)

7/9: one payment posted taking me from 50% utilization to 24%.

RESULT: I received roughly one point per drop, as I got about 22 points out of this, which pushed me into the 700 club for the first time ever.

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**ORIGINAL, STATIC ENTRIES FROM MARCH 2013 and BEYOND BELOW**

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Some time ago I underwent what was a fairly impressive physical transformation, and one of the key components was the sense of accountability to someone other than myself that I created by keeping an online journal within a fitness-oriented discussion board. It included logs, before and after pictures, etc, etc; basically all the trimmings necessary to be very openly accountable to progress. My plan is to do the same here. I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, made one fairly disjointed post and now intend to be very organized in this thread, effectively re-creating the journal approach i used for the physical transformation. My hope is that it not only holds me accountable for progress, but also A) serves as a location where I get helpful feedback on specific issues and B) allows someone else to ultimately do the same by following this as a guide, picking up on what I did correctly and hopefully learning from the few instances where I invariably do something wrong. As soon as I can I'll post a full score summary along with my basic plan of attack. I'll then try to make updates as frequently as possible on any remedial action I've taken and their results.

I'm definitely looking forward to this, and hope others are as well. In the 14 days or so I've been poking around here I've been very impressed with the quality of information within the community.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:37:27 GMT

Below is a screenshot of my starting point, which is 578 per the Equifax FICO scoring obtained on this site. That comes as a bit of a surprise since I'd pulled my number up to a 636 on the freecreditreport.com site. Based on reading some posts over the last few days here, I certainly expected it to be lower than the freecreditreport.com version, but not that much lower, so I'm a bit disappointed I suppose, but I'm trying to leverage that as motivation. As you can see from the screenshot, my ingredients are outlined as follows:

Payment History - Not Good
Amount of Debt - Not Good
Length of Credit History - Good
Amount of New Credit - Very Good

I'll outline in a subsequent post an overview of each as well as the details behind each ingredient and my general plan of attack over the next 2-3 months.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:34:20 GMT

The reason for the difference in scores are the ones from freecreditreport.com are not FICO scores, they are FAKO and based on that sites scoring. There can be a huge variance between a FAKO and true FICO and are pretty much useless.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:58:12 GMT

I figure that for the four major ingredients I'll work my way from best to worst since the "worst" will require the most detail.

Amount of New Credit - Very Good

This is kind of an ironic benefit. Because I've known my score was likely bad (just now getting on top of it in the last month) I never bothered applying for any sort of credit cards, etc. Part of my potential plan to up my AAoA and AC had been to become a joint account holder on one of my wife's oldest and highest limit cards. But now I'm questioning whether this will in fact be worth it since it may detract from the only truly positive element of my ingredients. This is one of the things I'm hoping to get feedback on from the community.

Length of Credit History - Good

I assume there just isn't much I can do about this. I spent most of my youth eschewing credit, and then when I did get it in my mid-20s I was irresponsible with it. Per the above, I'm hoping that by piggybacking on my wife's oldest/most established credit line will help with this, but other than that I assume this factor can only change with time.

Amount of Debt - Not Good

Admittedly, this one is a bit surprising to me. I currently have $45,000 in student loans and $9,400 in revolving debt. Some things are definitely worth noting here. Regarding the former, I'm actually on the low end of most people I know in terms of student loan debt (though that group's self selecting since my field requires all but requires a graduate degree so most people I know these days spent 6-7 years in higher ed). With the latter, my wife and I essentially put almost all of our expenses (regular or otherwise) on an AmEx card and pay it off at the end of each month like clockwork whether it's 3,000 dollars or 10,000 dollars. I don't know if these scores consider income, but to me 45-55k in debt is low relative to our income, which at the household level is relatively high ($325,000/year - 275k from me and 50k from her). And given that a substantial chunk of individuals at the intersection of my age and profession axes carry at least that much in SL debt, I'm a bit confused as to why that's considered "not good" or "too much" by this model. If this is the case, a massive portion of professionals under the age of 35 are going to be hard pressed to climb out of this hole. I guess I would have imagined this factor would be the result of a debt/income ratio versus some pure absolute value. Am I understanding this aspect correctly?

Payment History

This is the one I see as the truly bad one. I'm going to dedicate a separate post to this ingredient so as to not blow up this one.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:07:01 GMT

As promised, here's the breakdown of my bad payment history. I have 15 accounts on my report; a whopping nine of them have a negative flag. For each, I've outlined the type of account, the current balance and the negative flag as well as my plan at present to remedy.

American Express

Opened: 12/2011

Balance: $9,400

Negative Indicator: None

Plan of Action: None, except maybe to not use it so much. Essentially we use it for almost every expense under the sun then pay it off in full at the end of every month. This gives us great free vacations, etc but may be causing more harm than good.

Capital One

Opened: 2/2011

Balance: $481/$500 (which is odd because the website shows me at $39/$500 with that payment on 2/13)

Negative Indicator: YES – 30 days in March 2012 and June 2012

Plan of Action: The two 30 days are my only blemish here. I don’t necessarily think I’m a long standing customer of any significant value to them, so my faith in a goodwill letter isn’t exactly high. But, that said, under the assumption that it can’t hurt to try I am certainly going to do so.

First Premier

Opened: 9/2009

Balance: $127/$0

Negative Indicator: YES – my worst by far as it’s a charge off (Bad Debt/Collection) with a 30-60-90 day late in Jan, Feb and Mar of 2012 respectively. I foolishly believed I’d closed out the account when the card I had for 2+ years expired (i.e., I paid it in full and never gave it a second thought). The balance is the result of annual fees and other penalties after I’d paid it down to zero and assumed it was gone in 9/2011.

Plan of Action: I have no real idea here. I think pay-for-delete is my only option, but cursory reading of the forums seems to indicate that they’re terrible to deal with. It’s killing me that $137 dollars is murdering me like it is. Cue soapbox diatribe regarding the inequities of this whole system, but it’s my stupidity and I need to own it. I just want to own it in a way that helps me and doesn’t hurt me. I don’t want to unwittingly hit any reset buttons by negotiating or do further harm, so I suppose this is where I’m most in need of the community’s help. How should I handle this one?

First National CC

Opened: 12/2010

Balance: $110/$0 (I had a $1500 limit. The card expired 12/12 and they said they weren’t sending me a new one because of 3 past 30 day periods in the previous two years). UPDATE - This has been reinstated as of 4/1 based on my "appeal" letter!

Negative Indicator: YES – 30 days in Sep 2011, Jun 2012, and Dec 2012

Plan of Action: They mentioned I could “appeal” their decision to not renew, which I intend to do. I assume that having paid off a huge chunk of the balance plus showing proof of income as well as a general credit score increase over the past 2 months will help. As an aside, for those wondering how someone with a relatively high income could be hit with so many low dollar issues, it’s certainly part genuine idiocy on my part, but also a byproduct of the fact that this income stream is BRAND new. I was barely scraping by for the last two years until landing the job I took out all of those student loans for. Finally making decent money is what prompted me to get my behind in gear on this stuff.

Household Bank (about to become Capital One)

Opened: 4/2009

Balance: $4/$1,000

Negative Indicator: YES – 30 days in May 2012

Plan of Action: The one 30 day miss is my only blemish here. I’ve had the card for a few years, use it extensively and pay it off regularly. For that reason I think a good will deletion stands a solid chance of success. I’m also considering in the same letter asking for a credit limit increase (including proof of income, which I suspect is my biggest asset right this second).

Chase

Opened: 5/2008

Balance: $1/$1,500

Negative Indicator: None

Plan of Action: Confession: I’m not really even sure what this account is. So my plan of action is to figure that out. I hate that it might not be mine since it’s in great standing and has age to it, but I want to do this the right way.

NelNet Student Loan 1 and 2

Opened: 4/2003 on both

Balance: $24,525 on 1 and $11,482 on 2

Negative Indicator: None on either

Plan of Action: Just the cost of doing business along the way. Two things concern me here though: on the one hand, the fact that these report as two installment loans is, I’m told, a negative. I’ve asked them to consolidate internally and they say they can’t despite one auto-debit having paid them for the last 10 years. Secondly, as I indicated in my initial summary, I’m shocked that this is considered too much debt given what a borderline necessity that level of debt can be.

“Local” Student Loans 1, 2, 3 and 4

Opened: 7/2005 on 1, 10/2005 on 2, 4/2005 on 3 and 10/2005 on 4

Balance: $3,054 on 1, $3,052 on 2, $2,625 on 3 and $714 on 4

Negative Indicator: YES – 60 days in April 2010 and 90 days in May and June of 2010. These repeat for ALL FOUR loans. I took out one loan each year, and despite the fact that one auto-debit pays them all, they report each one separately and a blemish on one is automatically a blemish on all four. This DESTROYS me. I’ve asked and they can not consolidate them into one, so my plan has to be to fix them each.

Plan of Action: I desperately need a goodwill deletion here. I’ve been on autopayments for 7 years never missing a beat except for that one difficult stretch, and it literally magnifies times four. I have to believe they see how much that’s utterly killing me. This is the one that I lost sleep over.

Salute

Opened: 8/2007

Balance: $0/$0 (Closed by Myself in 10/10)

Negative Indicator: None

Plan of Action: Should this even be on here at this point? And is it hurting or helping me? Knowing the answers to these questions will dictate my plan of action on this front.

Local Bank Loan

Opened: 11/2004

Balance: $0/$0

Negative Indicator: None

Plan of Action: An old co-signed loan to help out with school that’s been paid off since 12/2005. As with the above, I’m not sure if having it helps or hurts me, and knowing which direction the answer leans will dictate my approach to this one.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:33:01 GMT

Of note, I have sent a goodwill adjustment request to the local student loan company. Specifically, I point out that I log on as a single user, have a single account number (the loan numbers are listed distinctly beneath my single account number) and have for 5+ years made only a single payment each month to them, yet all negative information is reported four distinct times. Thus, my single span of late payments with them in 2010 has, essentially, the same effect as being late with a credit card payment, car loan, student loan and installment loan - i.e., not a very good one. My hope is (and i point this out) that having been on auto-debit and not being even an hour late with a payment over the past 3 years will carry some weight on this front. Additionally, given that this is a very local-oriented outfit, I do allude to how i continue to represent higher education in this locale, having served as a public school teacher in the state as well as being actively involved in the alumni association of the college that is their bread and butter.

This is a huge black mark for me, so I'm hoping someone on the other end of the letter has a heart. If not, they do have a specially designated ombudsman contact for "general disputes" with whom I will follow up.

Will keep this thread updated with any and all progress...

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:00:05 GMT

Two things of note:

I saw a 5 point bump this week - for reasons I'm unsure of at present. I'm guessing utilization went down once Cap One processed and posted a payment. It's small, but i'll take it.
i did appeal First National's decision not to renew my card. I did so in writing basically citing the following: A) I went from 1,500/1,500 utilization to paying all the way down to 55 bucks, B) I mentioned the significant credit improvement steps I've taken in the last month or two (though I only have a 5 point FICO increase, I've pulled my FAKO up 100 from the point I started...and presumably my FICO was below 578 when I started) and C) provided proof of income, which as sad as it may be is I think one of my better bargaining chips for things like this and future CLIs.

Will keep this thread updated as I hear.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

dougnukem — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:20:30 GMT

I like this idea, and like you, I have done the same thing with a fitness lifestyle change in the past. Documenting your trials and such really helps motivate you, and I wish you the best of luck!

( Iwas wondering about doing the same thing with mine, as I have a long road to full recovery with my credit.)

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:56:37 GMT

A general update on an overall plan of attack. In an attempt to get my average credit limit up I'm taking two distinct approaches:

At the end of this month my wife will add me as an authorized user on her highest limit card (this should also help with AAoA).
I'm going to request a CLI in writing from each of my existing "in good standing" credit lines. My intent is to outline the efforts I've been making to establish better credit in addition to providing proof of income. I'm not putting much faith in results, but I figure it can't hurt. I'll update this thread as those requests receive any type of response.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:08:25 GMT

Approximately 2 weeks ago I appealed First National's decision to not renew my card, effectively cutting $1,500 out of my available credit and also axing one of my older accounts. Today I got the word that they did reinstate based upon that letter - which is great news. I'm not expecting any real score bump out of this, but it's a small victory and a step in the right direciton.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:17:55 GMT

Additional update on my CLI initiative: I received a somewhat cryptic response from Capital One which I'm asking about in more detail here.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 02:38:31 GMT

I haven't updated this in quite some time (my bad) but have elected to start in on this again.

At this point I'm in better shape (620s) largely from not having a late payment whatsoever in the last year or so (I think it may be 2 years since I've had one). Within the next 30-60 days I intend to pay off all of my revolving debt and see what uptick that gives me. I'll keep this thread updated, but am trying to figure out a better way to do so (maybe by updating the original post with links to subsequent threads).

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 06:37:20 GMT

Time for a general update. Right now my "amount of debt" and "payment history" are hurting me the most. I also have an old (but paid) California state tax lien. I'll breakdown those three below:

Amount of Debt (currently "Bad")

This one is an easy fix. I have only very low dollar cards given my history and I've not always been good about requesting CLI. Presently, they're all maxed out, which is not common. I pay my own travel for work and then get reimbursed at the end of the month. This month I've traveled every week and run up about 10k in expenses that won't be reimbursed until the end of the month, at which point I'll pay them all down. So my utilization is effectively 90% right now. In the meantime, the plan on this front is:

Pay down all credit card debt derived from work travel once reimbursed
Pay off family AMEX and stop using it for a bit as discussed here.
Yesterday I was added to my wife's highest limit, lowest utilization card (which also happens to be her oldest which should helf with AAoA)

Payment History (Currently "Not Good")

On this front I have one First Premier issue haunting me from way back when. A summary of that can be found here. Beyond that it's an increasingly aging but still existent history of late payments that all came during one 3 month stretch way back when. Those issues and general plan of attack are outlined below:

30 day late from 5/12 with First National. The plan here is to GW once this is paid down to zero.
30 day late from 5/12 with Capital One. Similar plan here - GW, GW, GW
30 day late from 5/12 with Credit One. Yup, you guessed it: GW
90 day late from First Premiere for 3/12. This one is currently bad debt and presents a problem that i'd like to fix. It was for less than $150 so I'd like to get it taken care of since it's painful to have such a low dollar figure haunting me.
90 day late from Granite State student loans from 5/2010. The killer here is that it shows four times since there's technically four distinct loans even though I've paid via one check since I graduated.

California Tax Lien

This one came from side work I had done that was supposedly "under the table." When I didn't re-up with this company they then reported the earnings. I had moved out of California and bounced around a number of states over the subsequent 3 years or so. The first i ever heard of the lien was when they pulled the $2k out of my bank account. Given I was never notified I'm thinking (okay, hoping) that hiring a CA tax attorney might help me get it removed. I'll happily pay for that service if it gets it taken off. This is one I wouldn't have screwed around with. Yes, I lazily ignored my bills for a stretch in 2012 and am paying for it now. But with an actual government i wouldn't have screwed around knowing how bad things could get.

Hoping to have some solid updates over the coming weeks and months.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 00:47:05 GMT

Updating with a general plan of attack over the next several weeks:

I've been added to my wife's most overall favorable account - a 12 year old account with a 17,500 limit. I expect to see an uptick from that in the next few weeks.
Expense report filing and reimbursement will get all of my own utility down to 15-20% and that's likely to be reported around the same time.
At that point I intend to hit up my lower dollar cards for credit limit increases. I'll send a fairly standard letter with proof of income and a review of my good standing with them over the last few years. If they are in any way not open to that I'll probably just cancel. None of them are particularly old and are dragging down my average credit limit as well as my average age. Before I do that, however, I'll also try for GW deletions of old 30 day lates...which is the next part of my strategy:
Goodwill the hell out of everyone. I'll be respectful and sincere, but I'll also be annoying (think Andy in Shawshank writing for the prison library). My biggest hurdle here is my student loan company. I've made on time payments like clockwork for about five years, but had a 90 day late before that. Because I took out a loan per semester it shows as four distinct 90 day lates which kills me. I've looked into it and their are folks guilty of manslaughter in that state who committed that crime around the time period of my 90 day late and they've been released. Thousands of DUI drivers have had their licenses suspended and renewed during that time as well...yet I'm still getting destroyed by this single misstep. I'm not even asking for eradication of the 90 day late...keep it on my highest loan; but don't make me pay for it four times over. That's the approach.
That leaves only the CA tax issue and First Premier matter as hangers on. I intend to address both of those shortly. I'm hesitant on the FP matter because i don't want to try for an uptick and shoot myself in the foot. We'll see what happens.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 02:11:41 GMT

A general update on activity over the last two weeks:

I sent a goodwill letter to the CA FTB that, among other things, respectfully cited the IRS's Fresh Start program and its intent. I also compared my IRS underpayment for the same year to the CA FTB matter. The same underpayment by me resulted in money owed to the IRS and the CA FTB. Immediately upon finding out about the IRS mattter (which was much more money) I paid it off, whereas I did not find out about the CA matter (I had moved out of the state shortly after the tax year in question) unitl it was "too late." I'm hoping that prompts them to understand that I wasn't trying to dodge the debt, I truly didn't know about it. When faced with a larger debt from the same issue I paid immediately.
I also sent a goodwill letter to my student loan company. In it I asked them to consider the disproportionate weight of my old 90 day late reporting four distinct times. I also tried to get ahead of any "we're not allowed to do anything" responses by indicating that when I worked for the financial services arm of a large health system, we would frequently cease reporting delinquincies when circumstances warranted. Which is, now, feeling painfully ironic. I'm guessing I personally approved such adjustments for close to 400 families over the years, and i'm hoping karma/the universe will pay me back.

As an aside, I've had a six point uptick the last week as a result of the first impact from paying down balances with an expense report reimbursement.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 22:14:00 GMT

Time for another general update:

I have not yet heard from either the California FTB or my student loan company regarding the two goodwill letters. We'll see what happens.
I paid off my First Premier charge off in full. I now intend to attempt a lengthy struggle with goodwill deletions...though I know the odds are against me with them. I'm concerned that I may have reset the clock on how long this small ($100) charge will stay on my report but I needed to get it off at some point and that breakign point was now.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 18:02:00 GMT

Great news regarding one of my two major goodwill initiatives! I received a call today that my student loan delinquencies are being removed. This takes care of several negatives given that each one reported four times. I'm hoping for a significant bump with this and will keep this thread updated with information on that front.

The details can be found here, where I've made a separate thread to keep this journal somewhat clean and lean.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 23:39:02 GMT

As a quick update, i sent my first First Premier GW attempt today (via email). We'll see how it pans out, but I suspect this will be a long and largely uphill battle.

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

SprintToFinish — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 22:43:02 GMT

Keep up the posts! Very encouraging to myself and other users. I'm in the rebuild process myself

Re: My Credit Repair Journal, or "Undoing the Follies of Youthful Stupidity"

AbsentMindedProfessor — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 15:25:34 GMT

Bad news today that I can't quite figure out. My FAKO score via freecreditreport went from 630 to 570 literally overnight. I'm creating a separate thread here to discuss (again in an effort to keep the journal somewhat lean and easier to follow)