topic Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go in Rebuilding Your Credit

Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 22:01:58 GMT

So I've lurked off and on these boards for awhile but a few weeks ago the "adulting" part of my brain kicked in to full gear. My husband and I are 100% committed to spending the next year and a half doing what we need to rebuild our credit, but we are just a bit at a loss as to where to start.

We both worked in real estate in our early 20's and when the market busted in 2008 we ended up taking the easy way out and filing chapter 7. Looking back it wasn't as bad as it felt and we probably should have found a way to work through it, but... lesson learned. Unfortunately at 20 we both had 720+ credit scores so everything was just easy.

Post bankruptcy we really didn't do anything with lines of credit for a few years out of fear, but we did struggle financially and had a number of utility-type bills go to collections. We also at some point opened a couple credit cards with low limits but of course hadn't learned our lesson, and they ended up getting charged off.

So today, we have two auto loans, one at *21%* interest, opened in June 2016 (we had no open lines at the time we purchased) and one at 14%, opened in August 2017, which is still bad but sadly, feels soooo much better compared to loan #1. We also had some consecutive 30 day lates on Loan #1 towards the end of last year. Very silly of us to not get that taken care of because financially we make plenty of money, we just decided one month that something else was more important probably (and likely unneccessary). And that one month rolled on and on.

Here are the first steps I took a couple weeks ago.

#1. Opened a Capital One Secured Mastercard: $200 CL (Added husband as authorized user) Will be using for gas and then paying off to 7% utilization just before statement closes, then leaving alone until reported and repeating so as to not get hit with interest. Also read somewhere that Captial One likes seeing multiple payments per month, so hoping that will help with future increases.

#2. Opened a 2-year, $25/mo. Self Lender account for husband. ***Should I open one for myself as well, since it doesn't appear you can have a joint account?***

And that is it. We are hoping that adding a revolving trade line will give our score a quick little jump, and having all loan payments current and paid on time will start to help as well so that we can trade-in our 21% interest vehicle around June of this year to something with a 12.9% or lower interest rate. We don't love the car and would rather get into a car that we can see ourselves keeping for the next 5-10 years with better interest. Aside from that, our main goal is to be able to buy a house next summer.

We have 14 collection accounts totalling $8,018 between the two of us (Listed Below. If you have any suggestions, please share!) The ones highlighted in red hit the 7.5 year mark in June of this year so I'm guessing its best to just let them fall off and focus on the others? All others are still about two-three years away so I'd rather do something about them.

Sprint $ 1,014.00

Midland Funding $ 754.00

First Premier $ 900.00

Gateway One Lending $ 2,079.00

ERC Time Warner Cable $208.00

Reliant Energy $ 579.00

HSBC Bank (Portfolio Recovery) $343.00

Electric Co. $37.00

ERC (ATT Uverse) $ 108.00

Apartment Utility $ 164.00

Portfolio Collections $642.00

Portfolio Collections $ 232.00

General Communications $268.00

Cornerstone Credit $202.00

CachLLC $ 488.00

If anyone has suggestions, tips, tricks, etc., I would LOVE to hear them. Our scores are currently right about 540 on all three reports. We would like to get to 640 by next summer and hopefully closer to 600 by July of this year (not even sure thats possible, lol). Do we need more new lines of revolving credit (Secured Cards?), should we just focus on the collections? A combination of both? We have extra income every month, usually a minimum $500-$1000 that I can put towards making the most progress as fast as possible, so please, don't hold anything back!

Thank you in advance! It is so hard to put all of one's dirty laundry out there like this, but having seen how supportive, encouraging and knowledgeable you all are, it makes it a lot easier to suck up pride and just do it!

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

FireMedic1 — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 23:28:56 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
So I've lurked off and on these boards for awhile but a few weeks ago the "adulting" part of my brain kicked in to full gear. My husband and I are 100% committed to spending the next year and a half doing what we need to rebuild our credit, but we are just a bit at a loss as to where to start.

We both worked in real estate in our early 20's and when the market busted in 2008 we ended up taking the easy way out and filing chapter 7. Looking back it wasn't as bad as it felt and we probably should have found a way to work through it, but... lesson learned. Unfortunately at 20 we both had 720+ credit scores so everything was just easy.

Post bankruptcy we really didn't do anything with lines of credit for a few years out of fear, but we did struggle financially and had a number of utility-type bills go to collections. We also at some point opened a couple credit cards with low limits but of course hadn't learned our lesson, and they ended up getting charged off.

So today, we have two auto loans, one at *21%* interest, opened in June 2016 (we had no open lines at the time we purchased) and one at 14%, opened in August 2017, which is still bad but sadly, feels soooo much better compared to loan #1. We also had some consecutive 30 day lates on Loan #1 towards the end of last year.   Very silly of us to not get that taken care of because financially we make plenty of money, we just decided one month that something else was more important probably (and likely unneccessary). And that one month rolled on and on.

Here are the first steps I took a couple weeks ago.
#1. Opened a Capital One Secured Mastercard: $200 CL (Added husband as authorized user) Will be using for gas and then paying off to 7% utilization just before statement closes, then leaving alone until reported and repeating so as to not get hit with interest. Also read somewhere that Captial One likes seeing multiple payments per month, so hoping that will help with future increases. Cap1 likes heavy usage and PIF each month. If its 1 or 2 payments. As long as its PIF your ok. Once you get more cards. Then you can follow the AZEO method. If it is the only card PIF each month.

#2. Opened a 2-year, $25/mo. Self Lender account for husband. ***Should I open one for myself as well, since it doesn't appear you can have a joint account?*** If one of the cars is in your name. You dont need another installment loan. 1 installment is all you need for FICO credit mix. It will help payment history. But thats about it.

And that is it. We are hoping that adding a revolving trade line will give our score a quick little jump, and having all loan payments current and paid on time will start to help as well so that we can trade-in our 21% interest vehicle around June of this year to something with a 12.9% or lower interest rate. We don't love the car and would rather get into a car that we can see ourselves keeping for the next 5-10 years with better interest. Aside from that, our main goal is to be able to buy a house next summer.

We have 14 collection accounts totalling $8,018 between the two of us (Listed Below. If you have any suggestions, please share!) The ones highlighted in red hit the 7.5 year mark in June of this year so I'm guessing its best to just let them fall off and focus on the others? All others are still about two-three years away so I'd rather do something about them.

Sprint $ 1,014.00
Midland Funding $ 754.00
First Premier $ 900.00
Gateway One Lending $ 2,079.00
ERC Time Warner Cable $208.00
Reliant Energy $ 579.00
HSBC Bank (Portfolio Recovery) $343.00
Electric Co. $37.00
ERC (ATT Uverse) $ 108.00
Apartment Utility $ 164.00
Portfolio Collections $642.00
Portfolio Collections $ 232.00
General Communications $268.00
Cornerstone Credit $202.00
CachLLC $ 488.00                                     Any accounts older than 2 yrs old. Portfolio will delete the accounts from your credit report. PIF or settled for less. You can try GW letter for the others.

If anyone has suggestions, tips, tricks, etc., I would LOVE to hear them. Our scores are currently right about 540 on all three reports. We would like to get to 640 by next summer and hopefully closer to 600 by July of this year (not even sure thats possible, lol). Do we need more new lines of revolving credit (Secured Cards?), should we just focus on the collections? A combination of both? We have extra income every month, usually a minimum $500-$1000 that I can put towards making the most progress as fast as possible, so please, don't hold anything back!

Thank you in advance! It is so hard to put all of one's dirty laundry out there like this, but having seen how supportive, encouraging and knowledgeable you all are, it makes it a lot easier to suck up pride and just do it!

Thats my take. Others may have suggestions to tackle some of the other collection accounts. Good Luck! Give Disco a try for the secured.

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

simplegirl — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 22:39:21 GMT

Midland will delete after 2 years & Portfolio deletes after your payment is successful for 30 days.

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 22:43:13 GMT

Thank you! Definitely starting with those then!

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

FireMedic1 — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 23:25:32 GMT

I stand corrected. So there's 2 Midlands I just googled. Credit and Funding owned by Encore. So they PFD. One site says they dont and will report for 7 yrs. and the other will PFD. Confusing.

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

sjt — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 18:11:17 GMT

@FireMedic1 wrote:
I stand corrected. So there's 2 Midlands I just googled. Credit and Funding owned by Encore. So they PFD. One site says they dont and will report for 7 yrs. and the other will PFD. Confusing.

I found out that Midland Funding is the entity that buys the debt and Midland Credit is the entity that collects. So all collections are through Midland Credit and they are the ones that report and remove from the CRA.

Link:
https://www.midlandcreditonline.com/who-is-mcm/midland-funding-llc/

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

Queen_Etherea — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 18:21:17 GMT

TransUnion will delete items 6 months before the DoFD (Date of First Deliquency), Experian will delete 3 months before, and Equifax automatically deletes 1 month before the DoFD. I would try calling TU and ask to speak to a SUPERVISOR. The front line CR's usually can't help with these kinds of things. Once you get a supervisor on the line, tell them you have a few accounts that you would like to request an early exclusion for. Look at your reports and see what accounts fall within that 6 month range and give them those accounts. I had mine deleted early using this method.

With Experian, I filed a dispute online and chose the option for "accounts are too old" and wrote that I was requesting an early exclusion. Experian does things by the first of the month. So if you opened an account on Oct. 25th, they'll report that it was opened on Oct. 1st. Same thing with delinquencies; go by the first of the month.

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 18:35:50 GMT

Thank you! I have a few of them that are within the next 3-6 months so that is very helpful to know!

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

sjt — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 19:27:57 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thank you! I have a few of them that are within the next 3-6 months so that is very helpful to know!

To add on to Queen's post:

I would call the Dispute Department at Experian. Depending on the person you are talking too, they can tell you the exact date they can delete. Sometimes its as early as 4 months.

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 20:50:37 GMT

Oh my gosh! I just submitted a request to TU on two of the collection accounts that were scheduled to come off in September and by the time I had hit submit and read the information on the next page, they had responded with the deletion of one of them already! Yay! I have been so overwhelmed by tackling these and have a color coded and information heavy spreadsheet that I would just stare at not knowing where to start. After seeing these suggestions today I decided those would be the easiest to get going and oh my gosh I'm so happy! Now I feel reinvigorated to keep going! Thank you!

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 21:10:06 GMT

And now both are showing as Complete - DELETED!

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

sjt — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 21:01:04 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Oh my gosh! I just submitted a request to TU on two of the collection accounts that were scheduled to come off in September and by the time I had hit submit and read the information on the next page, they had responded with the deletion of one of them already! Yay! I have been so overwhelmed by tackling these and have a color coded and information heavy spreadsheet that I would just stare at not knowing where to start. After seeing these suggestions today I decided those would be the easiest to get going and oh my gosh I'm so happy! Now I feel reinvigorated to keep going! Thank you!

Yay!

Is there anything left on TU that needs to be deleted?

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 21:09:43 GMT

Not right now. The rest are all still outside the 6 month early exclusion time but I'll be able to do it with all but two inside of a year. So of course now I have a column in my spreadsheet for each CRA and whether the collection has been deleted or the date I need to request so I can keep track of them! The other two are both companies that I've read will do PFD so I'll be working on those next!

Re: Please help! Looking for advice on where to start and what direction to go

sjt — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 23:18:04 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Not right now. The rest are all still outside the 6 month early exclusion time but I'll be able to do it with all but two inside of a year. So of course now I have a column in my spreadsheet for each CRA and whether the collection has been deleted or the date I need to request so I can keep track of them! The other two are both companies that I've read will do PFD so I'll be working on those next!

You are off to a good start. Using spreadsheets helps alot.