topic What's my future? in Rebuilding Your Credit

What's my future?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:42:21 GMT

I'm somewhat new to the forums and myFICO and have recently taken an extremely vested interest in my finances. I'm 25, college grad, looking for a teaching job; I currently work at a Y in the area (going on 6 years) and have a few other jobs as well.

The first time I pulled my reports and scores was the end of October. TU - 690, EQ - 678, EX - 646 . I was irresponsible four or so years ago when I had some financial mismanagement. Accidental NSF check 4 years ago which was promptly paid off; and I've had a few 30/60 day lates over 3+ years ago. I also had a 30-day late on a student loan which entered repayment status and I was unaware of it but promptly paid that and the late fee off (June of '07).

Since then, I have not had any problems managing payments. I have 8 CC, but only 1 has a balance ($10). I have a total $13,000-14,000 credit line. I have about 10 student loan accounts totaling $52,000.

I know it's based on a lot of factors, but any ideas of approximately what I could expect in terms of score increases in the next month, 6 months, year? I've opened 2 new credit cards this year, but am not planning on applying for any more credit within the next few years. I only use my CC for purchases I have the cash for (gas, etc.).

I subscribe to ScoreWatch and Quarterly Monitoring, so I am pretty disciplined now regarding my budget and scores. However, I am anxious to see my scores change but know it gets way too expensive quickly to keep pulling scores manually.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Re: What's my future?

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:25:19 GMT

Just continue to make your payments and not miss any, keep a low credit to debt ratio on your revolving credit, and do not apply for more credit (It seems like you have enough credit for now). You should expect TU and EQ to be in the low 700's in the next 3-6 months and EX will be a while. Hope that helps

Re: What's my future?

johnsj21 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:54:03 GMT

You might consider checking out the "Rebuiling your Credit" boards...they are SUPER helpful. You will definately want to GW for the 30 and 60 day lates...the 60 days are probably hurting your scores the most. Also, you have gereat util but optimally you want to have all of your cards showing a balance of 1-9% of the CL for optimal scores. See you on "rebuiliding"!!!

Message Edited by johnsj21 on 11-19-2008 12:54 PM

Re: What's my future?

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:45:23 GMT

Thanks for the replies. I recently checked TrueCredit (received the 30-day trial). One of my GW letters to BoA must have worked because it no longer shows the 30-day late I had from 2004! I don't think it has updated yet with EQ and EX, but soon hopefully.

I'm working on sending a second round of GW letters to a 4 other creditors today.

I'm hopefully looking to get my student loans down to $30,000 as I am looking to purchase a car within the next two years or so. I'm hoping I can get my credit scores up to 700 by next year as well.

If a MOD could move this to the "Rebuilding" forum that would be great.

Re: What's my future?

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:40:12 GMT

@johnsj21 wrote:
Also, you have gereat util but optimally you want to have all of your cards showing a balance of 1-9% of the CL for optimal scores. See you on "rebuiliding"!!!

Perhaps I am mis-reading this but wanted to clarify just so no one takes it the wrong way. Many people report optimal scores when less than half of the accounts report a balance. Only letting one card report a balance is probably better than having every card report a balance. Any card that does report a balance should be no more than 9% of that card's credit limit. If you do use all of your cards, pay most of them off before the statement closes so a balance doesn't report..