topic Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible? in Rebuilding Your Credit

Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 06:43:44 GMT

I have been very irresponsible most of my young adult life. never paid my bills, always ignoring debt collector's. the past 6 months i have been practicing good spending and paying my bills, joined a credit union, and so on, really helped that i went from making $20k/year to $60-80k/year starting 05/2015 my credit score in 03/2015 was 470s-480s range. according to CreditKarma at the time i thought best way to boost credit is get as much as possible and make payments each month on time. boy was i wrong. after 1-2 months it went from 470s then to 580s (Credit Karma) i also had 2 collections fall off. i thought awesome should be at 600s in a few months and iam wanting to buy a house in 01/16-02/16

i need to move closer to my work and was going to rent but to rent anywhere near my work for my family size is $1,200-1600/month i would rather just buy a house instead of throwing my money away on rent. i need my credit score to be at 620-650 by January is it possible

CREDIT REPORT FROM ALL THREE BUREAU'S UPDATED 09/01/2015

TU:539 EXP: 531 EQ:524 (True FICO 8 Scores)

-I have 5 open non medical collections

-Verizon $1,380 opened 02/2012 filled dispute 06/2014 updated the open date to 06/2014

-Comcast $159 opened 12/2013

-Nashville electric $280 opened in 10/2012 i disputed it 04/2015 it then updated the open date to 04/2015

-FOX Collection $25 opened 10/2014 paid in full 06/2015

-Nashville Fire/EMS 09/2014 $757

I have 2 closed collections

- AUTOMASTERS $2,900/$12,000 repossession opened 09/2012 closed 03/2013

- Some company that bought the Auto Masters Loan mentioned above^^ the weird thing about this one is its for the original amount of the AUTOMASTERS loan and has the same monthly payment and terms and it says im paying on time monthly in good standing but its closed ??

-I have 7 credit cards reporting just paid them down two weeks ago still waiting on them to report new balances.

-Credit One card opened 06/2015 $302/$300 paid it down to $50/$300

-Care Care One card authorized opened 04/2015 $504/$500 paid it down to $0/$500

-Capital One card authorized user, opened 12/2011 $480/500 paid down to $300/$500

-capital One card authorized user, opened 06/2015 $514/$500 paid down to $$230/$500

-Walmart store card authorized user, opened 12/2014 $460/$500 removed myself as authorized user 06/2015 still reporting as of 08/2015

-Finger Hut Store card opened 06/2015 $116/$220,new balance will be $80/220

-Kay jewelers closed in 2013 had 6 missed payments before paying it off

-I have 7 Installment loans reporting

-Carmax Auto $0 balance, Statusaid closed, no missed payments opened 10/2011 closed 05/2012

-Carmax Auto $0 balance, Statusaid closed, no missed payments opened 07/2011 closed 10/2011

-Credit Acceptance $7,522, Status:current no missed payments opened 07/2015

-Old Hickory Credit Union, Status:current ,$384/$500 no missed payments opened 06/2015

-Sun Loan $245 Status:current no missed payments opened 06/2015

-Fingerhut FreshStart $0 balance, Status:closed, no missed payments opened 04/2015 closed 06/2015

-- World Finance installment loan, Status:Charge-off, balance $402, 1 on time payment 15 missed payments opened 01/2014 updated 06/2014

i have 28 hard inquiries mainly from two car lots i tried to get credit from sent my application to 15 different lenders over a two week span. on 07/2015

what should i do to get from 530 to 650 in 6 months ??

pay off collections?? i have already talked to the open collections none of the agencies will pay for delete

i am paying off the rest of the credit cards at the end of this month and the sun loan will be paid off friday.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

pronger865 — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 19:28:05 GMT

My credit scores are around 590 for Equifax, 622 for Trans Union and 611 for Experian. Not high enough for a mortgage around here, got turned down for multiple house leases and finally got one accepted with two months rent as a security deposit and first months rent up front. So $4500 upfront to get the keys.

Good luck.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 19:36:36 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have been very irresponsible most of my young adult life. never paid my bills, always ignoring debt collector's. the past 6 months i have been practicing good spending and paying my bills, joined a credit union, and so on, really helped that i went from making $20k/year to $60-80k/year starting 05/2015 my credit score in 03/2015 was 470s-480s range. according to CreditKarma at the time i thought best way to boost credit is get as much as possible and make payments each month on time. boy was i wrong. after 1-2 months it went from 470s then to 580s (Credit Karma) i also had 2 collections fall off. i thought awesome should be at 600s in a few months and iam wanting to buy a house in 01/16-02/16
i need to move closer to my work and was going to rent but to rent anywhere near my work for my family size is $1,200-1600/month i would rather just buy a house instead of throwing my money away on rent. i need my credit score to be at 620-650 by January is it possible

CREDIT REPORT FROM ALL THREE BUREAU'S UPDATED 09/01/2015
TU:539 EXP: 531 EQ:524 (True FICO 8 Scores)

-I have 5 open non medical collections
-Verizon $1,380 opened 02/2012 filled dispute 06/2014 updated the open date to 06/2014

-Comcast $159 opened 12/2013
-Nashville electric $280 opened in 10/2012 i disputed it 04/2015 it then updated the open date to 04/2015
-FOX Collection $25 opened 10/2014 paid in full 06/2015
-Nashville Fire/EMS 09/2014 $757

I have 2 closed collections
- AUTOMASTERS $2,900/$12,000 repossession opened 09/2012 closed 03/2013
- Some company that bought the Auto Masters Loan mentioned above^^ the weird thing about this one is its for the original amount of the AUTOMASTERS loan and has the same monthly payment and terms and it says im paying on time monthly in good standing but its closed ??

-I have 7 credit cards reporting just paid them down two weeks ago still waiting on them to report new balances.
-Credit One card opened 06/2015 $302/$300 paid it down to $50/$300
-Care Care One card authorized opened 04/2015 $504/$500 paid it down to $0/$500
-Capital One card authorized user, opened 12/2011 $480/500 paid down to $300/$500
-capital One card authorized user, opened 06/2015 $514/$500 paid down to $$230/$500
-Walmart store card authorized user, opened 12/2014 $460/$500 removed myself as authorized user 06/2015 still reporting as of 08/2015
-Finger Hut Store card opened 06/2015 $116/$220,new balance will be $80/220
-Kay jewelers closed in 2013 had 6 missed payments before paying it off

-I have 7 Installment loans reporting
-Carmax Auto $0 balance, Statusaid closed, no missed payments opened 10/2011 closed 05/2012
-Carmax Auto $0 balance, Statusaid closed, no missed payments opened 07/2011 closed 10/2011
-Credit Acceptance $7,522, Status:current no missed payments opened 07/2015
-Old Hickory Credit Union, Status:current ,$384/$500 no missed payments opened 06/2015
-Sun Loan $245 Status:current no missed payments opened 06/2015
-Fingerhut FreshStart $0 balance, Status:closed, no missed payments opened 04/2015 closed 06/2015
-- World Finance installment loan, Status:Charge-off, balance $402, 1 on time payment 15 missed payments opened 01/2014 updated 06/2014

i have 28 hard inquiries mainly from two car lots i tried to get credit from sent my application to 15 different lenders over a two week span. on 07/2015

what should i do to get from 530 to 650 in 6 months ??
pay off collections?? i have already talked to the open collections none of the agencies will pay for delete
i am paying off the rest of the credit cards at the end of this month and the sun loan will be paid off friday.

Not likely to happen in 6 months. 12-24 months is more realistic. First off - you will need to establish your own accounts and divest yourself of the AU accounts. Paying down ALL of the balances except for one (leave <10% on it) will maximize the UTI portion of your scores and help get you approved for your own accounts. I'd try Capital One first, get a platinum card and a QS1 card.

Also you don't need a slew of installment accounts. One open active installment account is all you need. Your auto loan will suffice there. Pay off the others.

Don't worry about inquiries, they are a necessary part of re-establishing credit and are gone in 24 months.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 00:21:04 GMT

Anything is possible. My wife's FAKO scores on credit karma were 580 EQ and 576 TU on 3/3/15 and is now 687 EQ and 667 TU. I took over her credit file and went crazy sending GW letters, dispute letters, and a combination of GW emails and online disputes (which you shouldn't do. Always send mail for disputes). Anyways, she had 7 collections in March and now only has 1 paid collection showing which I am in the process of fighting to get it removed for reporting incorrectly. First things first, if you have the available funds, pay off ALL of you credit cards to $0 except one and keep that last balance at less than 10% of the limit. Utilization is 35% of your score. I recently went from 75% to %35 and got a quick 30 point boost on TU and EQ. I had my wife fire off random disputes with the collections by simply stating that they weren't hers and a few of them came off when the companies failed to verify the debt. She paid off an old library collection and they automatically removed the collection from her report. The hard inquiries typically only hurt for 12 months so that shouldn't be too much of a burden with each passing month. As for the closed collections, I sent them GW letters for my wifes acct and one of them initially said no twice, but like magic they stopped reporting the account a few weeks after I sent them a 2nd GW letter. I started this campaing in June and she has jumped 100 points already. Also, its easier to jump up when your scores a lower. If you're serious about raising those scores, you need to act immediately since this process tends to be slow and will take months to fix, assuming mostly everything goes your way. Good luck!

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 01:32:44 GMT

It will be very difficult to get a mortgage with that many unpaid collections. You'd be best working on paying them off/paying for delete, then start saving for the largest down payment you can afford. Remember, one mortgage percentage point can be tens of thousands of dollars in interest, it's in your best interest to go in as high as possible.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

frank0830 — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 02:07:38 GMT

I just closed on my house and went through this with my lender. They gave me some great advice and I would encourage you to find a lender and sit down with them and explain your situation. When you sit down with the lender, give the same info you provided here to the lender, (so you dont get another hard pull) and they can probably give you some more concrete information as to what to do to improve your credit for closing. Remember, it's their job to close loans and if they can get you there, they will.

My recommendation would be to (in this order):

1) Pay off your debt in collection

2) Get your cards down to ~20% of the balance, not 0

3) Get as much money in your savings as possible but do not deposit any large/abnormal deposits. If you sell something or gain what a bank account might look like as a large amount, deposit the cash in at least 1 week spurts, not all at once. Some underwriters may look at large deposits as a 'gift'. Anotherwords, if you typically put a few hundred into savings every month, don't deposit $1000- all of the sudden.

Also:

*do not close any accounts

*do not pay them down to -0-

*It's my thought that the turn of the year may be too soon to get this accomplished, unless you go to beans and rice for food and throw everything at debt. That said, time helps credit and something my experience tells me you will need.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 05:16:23 GMT

@frank0830 wrote:
I just closed on my house and went through this with my lender. They gave me some great advice and I would encourage you to find a lender and sit down with them and explain your situation. When you sit down with the lender, give the same info you provided here to the lender, (so you dont get another hard pull) and they can probably give you some more concrete information as to what to do to improve your credit for closing. Remember, it's their job to close loans and if they can get you there, they will.

My recommendation would be to (in this order):

1) Pay off your debt in collection
2) Get your cards down to ~20% of the balance, not 0
3) Get as much money in your savings as possible but do not deposit any large/abnormal deposits. If you sell something or gain what a bank account might look like as a large amount, deposit the cash in at least 1 week spurts, not all at once. Some underwriters may look at large deposits as a 'gift'. Anotherwords, if you typically put a few hundred into savings every month, don't deposit $1000- all of the sudden.

Also:
*do not close any accounts
*do not pay them down to -0-
*It's my thought that the turn of the year may be too soon to get this accomplished, unless you go to beans and rice for food and throw everything at debt. That said, time helps credit and something my experience tells me you will need.

Correction - do not pay them *ALL* down to $0. Leave a SMALL balance on ONE card.

If you have a lot of cards you can get by with several balances, but there is no scoring advantage to doing that. One small balance will ALWAYS put you in the ballpark with maximum UTI% score.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 05:26:45 GMT

Thanks for all the advice. Today I talked to every open collection I have. My results were not great at all.

Verizon collections would not budge on any idea of deleting and acted like I was crazy for asking. They offered me a $580 settlement on the $1,380 balance

3rd party collections for my NES Electric bill that updated in 04/2015 that was originally in default 2012
Said they would not delete and that it would keep updating until it was paid. So I called NES directly they said I can still pay them and that they will tell the collection agency to retract it for a full payment only if I pay directly to NES should I believe them?

And the rest acted like it was a huge deal and that there's nothing they can do to remove it.
So how can I get them to budge?
What kind of letters can be sent?
What are GW letters?
Should I hire Lexington Law or another "credit repair" agency's?
Should I pay it even if it won't be removed?

This Friday I'm going to pay
$50 on each credit card.
Pay off my current installment loan from sun loan.
Pay off my fingerhut store card
Pay my NES electric collections directly to NES and hope they keep their word on having it removed.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 20:06:07 GMT

Try to get everything that is agreed to in writing. Some CA's have been known to just take people's money and not remove the collection from their reports. Without going into too much detail, a GW letter means goodwill letter. A Goodwill letter is communication from you to an Original Creditor (OC) or Collection Agency (CA) asking for goodwill or help in removing specific reporting of a tradeline like lates, status, comments, or even removing the reported tradeline entirely. More in-depth info can be found in the credit rebuilding section (There is a lot of great information there). If you wanna spend money, or have extra money to use, then you can use a credit repair agency. They do not do anything that you cannot do for yourself. Credit repair is not easy and it does not come quickly or happen over night. It will take weeks, or more likely, months to get it fixed. You can look up the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to see if any of your creditors have broken the law by inappropriately trying to collect the debts or by reporting the collections/late payments/negative information incorrectly. The best advice I can give is to keep writing letters as they tend to reach decision makers, while phone calls simply put you with helpless customer service agents who do not have the authority to do things with regards to your credit reporting. If you must make a phone call, ask to speak to a supervisor of some sort or the highest up person they have available. Most agencies will try to play hardball with removing items since they do not want to do this for everyone who asks. Just a few months ago, I had no idea about anything related to credit and did a lot of reading here and on other sites and I have gained a great amount of knowledge along the way thanks to the help from other forum members with more knowledge than myself. If I can do it, so can you. You just have to be very patient and create a paper trail so you can document all correspondence between you and your creditors. You may be able to catch them doing something that violates the FDCPA or FCRA and use that against them.

Examples for letters to send

http://community.debtcc.com/letters/index.html

(Mod Cut-3 links not allowed to be posted on myFico)

Quick reference for FCRA

http://www.creditreporting.com/fair-credit-reporting-act/#summary

FDCPA

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-proceedings/fair-debt-collection-practices-act-text#809

There is a little bit of legal-speak in these things but the more you read, the better you will understand the credit laws.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 13:20:45 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

3rd party collections for my NES Electric bill that updated in 04/2015 that was originally in default 2012
Said they would not delete and that it would keep updating until it was paid. So I called NES directly they said I can still pay them and that they will tell the collection agency to retract it for a full payment only if I pay directly to NES should I believe them?

Pay my NES electric collections directly to NES and hope they keep their word on having it removed.

I did this with Republic when they told me they would do it, and they kept their word. Obviously it's best to get something in writing, but they aren't a debt collector so generally they are less scummy about such things. If they won't do it in writing, try to record the call.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 14:29:28 GMT

If you accept the settlement from Verizon, you'll receive a 1099-C for the discharged debt. Any forgiven amount over $599 triggers a 1099-C. Just an FYI. I've been trying to avoid those for small amounts, because they can be a hassle for taxes.
Yes, you can probably trust NES to keep their word.
You can keep trying to offer Pay For Deletes. No guarantee they will budge.
GW letters are goodwill letters. They are sent after payment to request deletion out of goodwill. You can also send them to creditors with late payments recorded, and request goodwill removal of those lates.
You should not hire Lexington Law or any other firm that promises to "fix" your credit.
You should absolutely pay it even if it won't be removed. They will factor in your outstanding debts when you apply for a mortgage.
Why are you going to pay off your installment loan? You should let that ride as long as possible as it's your only installment loan.
Your FICO 08 scores are not your mortgage scores. Even the mortgage scores you get via MyFICO may not reflect what a lender will pull. Your best bet (I think) is to find a lender you plan to work with, determine what scores they see and come up with a plan of attack. I wouldn't worry about the hard pull right now.
The hard pulls from the car dearlerships won't affect you very much - you get time to "shop" in the same industry and only receive a single "hit" for the pulls.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 17:20:42 GMT

The sun loan is not my only installment loan. My truck loan is labeled installment loan so is my secured loan from my credit union I mainly want to pay it off cause it has gained over $60 interest in 3 months. What exactly is a 1099C? So should I pay my current up to date debt off or collections first?

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:44:22 GMT

Current debt 1st as this will have a greater impact on your credit score. Paying off collections may result in the collection updating and possibly hurting your score

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

frank0830 — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 01:06:07 GMT

No, there is no correction. I wrote it exactly as it was told to me by my lender. -though I had no debt in collection, they specifically said to get my CC down to 20-30% because it shows utilization. $0 was actually bad.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 01:46:52 GMT

@frank0830 wrote:
No, there is no correction. I wrote it exactly as it was told to me by my lender. -though I had no debt in collection, they specifically said to get my CC down to 20-30% because it shows utilization. $0 was actually bad.

It may be what you lender told you, but its still incorrect as written.

Your statement was:

"do not pay them down to -0"

On its face, that statement implies *all* cards should carry a balance. That is incorrect advice, no matter what the lender told you. I was clarifying that the BEST strategy that ALWAYS gets you in max FICO score territory is for ONE card to carry a SMALL balance. It a well established strategy that many, many people here have verified works every time.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 17:45:54 GMT

Such good advice from people here. You definately have room to make big improvements, and you already know what the problem areas are. You need to get those collections paid for delete as fast as you can, so you score can START to recover and rise. Don't get me wrong, you'll have a 50 point increase as soon as you tackle those. But you need to keep rising. Pay for Delete. Write goodwill letters.

Goodluck.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 16:52:53 GMT

Credit update today my fico 8 from experian updated to 608!!!!! took my self off as authorized used on the cap one cards. And the discount tire card that was maxed out reported 1%.and the Walmart card fell off. Still waiting on everything else to update and report.
Question. How come cap1 never does CLI my mother has her card for over 2 years never paid late always paid at least double payments and always carried too much of a balance and it's still at $500 limit her fico 8 is 619

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 17:04:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Credit update today my fico 8 from experian updated to 608!!!!! took my self off as authorized used on the cap one cards. And the discount tire card that was maxed out reported 1%.and the Walmart card fell off. Still waiting on everything else to update and report.
Question. How come cap1 never does CLI my mother has her card for over 2 years never paid late always paid at least double payments and always carried too much of a balance and it's still at $500 limit her fico 8 is 619

Has she gone online and requested a CLI?

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 17:17:12 GMT

Yes she has requested every month for 6 months and her credit score is usally higher. She had a fee INQ and maxed one of her cards. 2 months ago her fico score was 648. None of her cards will increase her limit.

Re: Gain 100 points in less than six months? is it possible?

TuffTurkey — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 17:39:30 GMT

Its Possible. Ive done it in 3 months. YMMV. But attacking derogs, negative things on credit. I.e CO , Late payments, Utilization. Etc Etc. Correcting these things showed me best results and keeping up with your currents and on time. But anything is possible.