topic Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone in Rebuilding Your Credit

Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 01:12:02 GMT

Hey guys, I was hoping some people could give me some guidance on building my credit. I'm watching so many youtube vids/reading this and that and I just want to make sure I'm on the right path. So... I'm just finishing a prison sentence and trying to rebuild my credit after being gone almost 7 years. I had credit before but had mesed it up in 08' during the recession. All that stuff is gone now. Trying to do everything right this time. My only goal credit wise right now is to be able to get decent rewards cards. - Right now I have (according to credit karma/vantage score) a 633 TU & a 630 equifax. Experian will not score me because of lack of history. - I have a $40 collection on TU & Equifax that is legit but will fall of in May of next year. I had a $500 collection that I disputed and removed from TU & experian. I'm working on getting it taken off equifax (its noted right now as having been disputed, that gave me some points) - I applied for and was denied an Amazon store card, PayPal credit, Petal(sp) overstock(sp) and fingerhut. The first hp from the amazon card pulled my TU from a 663 to a 633. Oddly, the paypal hp boosted my equifax 4 points. - After getting denied for fingerhut I figured unsecured credit was off the table. I went ahead and got a secured Discover and I put up $1,000. Should get the card this week. - I signed up for Kikoff & made my first payment last week. - Using the shopping cart trick I got approved for $1,500 with Appliance Connection. What next? I regret those shots in the dark when I first started that resulted in a hp with no approval. I feel like I need at least one more line of credit so my file isn't so thin? A $200 secured capital one? MyJewelers Club? I don't have HUGE goals but I want to get the following in my wallet: Chase Signature Amazon Visa, Apple card, & Citi Double. Any advice appreciated. I just feel dizzy with all these angles you find listed online.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 01:42:12 GMT

Welcome to the boards For scoring mix, all you need is an installment (I assume that's what Kikoff is) and three revolvers. You have AC and Disco already. Next good bet is OpenSky - it's a no-credit-check card with a $39 annual fee, well worth it for its purpose.

Very simply, once you have the three cards and the installment, use them all you like but when the statements cut, let a $10-15 balance report on Disco and have the other two fully paid off. This is called AZEO, all zero except one. It helps with some extra points. A good practice to get into would be to make your minimum payment as soon as the statement cuts, so your obligation is done and you can't be late. Then pay off later charges before the due date, in full for AC and OpenSky and all but that $15 on Disco. Long as you pay that off once the statement cuts, you'll pay no interest and preserve your grace period.

Other than that, just do AZEO, make every payment on time, always, not even an hour late, and just cruise for two years. At that point, all your HPs will be gone, you'll have two solid years of perfect history, and you'll have zero derogs on your reports. Sky's the limit at that point!

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

dragontears — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 01:27:54 GMT

At this point what you need is TIME

Right now you don't have a FICO score, you need 6 months of credit history to generate FICO scores.

If I was you, I would use your Discover card responsibly and wait until you get an actual FICO score

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Slabenstein — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 01:47:31 GMT

It will take time to build a profile for the prime cards that you want. I'm not familiar with Kikoff, but my advice would be to let the three accounts you have gain age & and let the inq's you burned before picking them up get older as well. If you garden for at least a year, you'll have three lines with a year of positive payments and your inq's, while still visible to lenders, will have become unscorable. (The inq's will fall off your reports after two years.) Since you've been out of the credit game for 7 years, you're pretty much starting over from scratch, and just like someone new to credit, you'll have to establish history and grow score before the major lenders will open up their rewards cards to you. In the meantime, you actually have a good rewards card in the Discover secured, and you can request they switch it from the capped 2% dining/gas rewards structure to the 5% rotating categories the It CB has, if you think that would work better for you. Additionally, it can graduate to a unsecured card in < 1 yr if your profile supports it.

While you're gardening, I'd suggest researching and reading up on credit scores and credit reports from good sources. @Anonymous's scoring primer is an excellent place to start. The Vantage scores you're seeing from CK have a pretty limited value in judging where you are in your credit journey since very few lenders actually use them. FICO scores are the ones you really want to monitor, and you're not seeing a FICO from EX yet b/c you need six mo's of credit history to generate a FICO score. That's ofc another good reason to garden for a bit, as you'll be spending your HPs on denials for the most part until you actually have a score.

The $40 collection actually isn't counting against score on FICO version 8 & 9, as they discount nuisance collections of < $100. Good luck on getting the $500 CA dropped from EQ. If you run into any trouble with it, there are a lot of good people in this rebuilding forum who can advise you on further steps.

Welcome to the forums, and good luck on your journey!

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

dragontears — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 01:51:45 GMT

Forgot to address your request for a "road map" to your goal cards

Chase: in general likes to see at least 1 year of revolving account history. Also has 5/24 rule, which is if you have opened 5 or more accounts in the last 24 months it is a automatic denial

Citi: very inquiry sensitive, limit your number of inquiries in the 6 months before applying

Apple card: I have no knowledge about this card as I don't own any fruit technology lol

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 02:32:45 GMT

Wow! What a warm welcome. Thanks for the advice so far. Kikoff *is* an installment loan. They loan you $12 and you pay back $1/mo. I do plan to switch the Discover over to the 5% rewards & will probably max out the $2,500 security deposit to take the most advantage of the rewards. The CK vantage scores gave me lofty expectations but it sunk in that time was the biggest factor when fingerhut denied me. Right now I just want to make sure I have the right seeds planted. Thanks again.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 02:59:11 GMT

You do. In credit, only the negatives happen quickly. Building a solid profile takes time and patience with some strategy. Stick around here, read like crazy, and ask questions as they occur to you. We'll help you set yourself up nicely.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 03:22:47 GMT

Sorry about the formatting. I'm on a 'dumb' phone while I wait for the new iphone & its not putting in my paragraph breaks. My $500 CA is showing as being from 2016, for a verizon account, but that would be during my 'vacation' so not posible. My best guess is that its actually an older debt that was resold and they messed up the date one of the times it changed hands. I Disputed it w/ TU and experian super easily online but equifax is being a pain about letting me get setup with their site. They sent me a pin in the mail and now they want me to call. Thinking I may just mail out a letter this weekend. After winning the dispute on the other two bureaus my equifax entry did get updated (assumingly by the collection agency themselves?) to say I disputed the claim (and my vantage score went up like 20 points) but nothing has progressed past that.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

dragontears — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 03:31:12 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Sorry about the formatting. I'm on a 'dumb' phone while I wait for the new iphone & its not putting in my paragraph breaks. My $500 CA is showing as being from 2016, for a verizon account, but that would be during my 'vacation' so not posible. My best guess is that its actually an older debt that was resold and they messed up the date one of the times it changed hands. I Disputed it w/ TU and experian super easily online but equifax is being a pain about letting me get setup with their site. They sent me a pin in the mail and now they want me to call. Thinking I may just mail out a letter this weekend. After winning the dispute on the other two bureaus my equifax entry did get updated (assumingly by the collection agency themselves?) to say I disputed the claim (and my vantage score went up like 20 points) but nothing has progressed past that.

Have you pulled your reports directly from annual credit report site? It is currently allowing weekly pulls of your reports.

It is important to understand that with CA the "date opened" has nothing to do with the date of first default (DOFD) which is what credit report exclusion is based on.

Your actual reports will either list the DOFD (EQ) or "on report until" date so you can figure out how old this account actually is.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 03:56:58 GMT

That’s exactly what I was going to say, pull your ACR reports to determine the real date it falls off.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 03:59:16 GMT

Is appliance connection a revolver or a loan?

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Slabenstein — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 04:04:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Is appliance connection a revolver or a loan?

I think it's a Comenity store card, unless the OP applied for something else they offer.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 04:38:05 GMT

Yes, AC is a Comenity store card. Just tried to run my Equifax thru ACR and the same hurdle as doing it on equifax's own site. They want me to mail in copies of my ss card, dl, etc... to prove who I am. So i'll have to do that this week.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

dragontears — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 04:52:40 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Yes, AC is a Comenity store card. Just tried to run my Equifax thru ACR and the same hurdle as doing it on equifax's own site. They want me to mail in copies of my ss card, dl, etc... to prove who I am. So i'll have to do that this week.

It happens, EQ can be such a pain

I would also recommend you read the scoring primer found in "Understanding Scoring" sub forum. It is a looong read so get your favorite beverage in hand before you start but there is a TON of really good information there

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Slabenstein — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 04:53:01 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Yes, AC is a Comenity store card. Just tried to run my Equifax thru ACR and the same hurdle as doing it on equifax's own site. They want me to mail in copies of my ss card, dl, etc... to prove who I am. So i'll have to do that this week.

EQ's ID verification for ACR can be a PITA. My SO can't access theirs due to the bonkers questions about loans they've never had. We use MyEQ to keep tabs on that bureau for them. It's an EQ site, but the info isn't quite as complete as ACR, unfortunately, and I don't know whether it's useful for judging DoFD on CAs. It might not be any better than CK.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 05:29:44 GMT

@Slabenstein wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Yes, AC is a Comenity store card. Just tried to run my Equifax thru ACR and the same hurdle as doing it on equifax's own site. They want me to mail in copies of my ss card, dl, etc... to prove who I am. So i'll have to do that this week.
EQ's ID verification for ACR can be a PITA. My SO can't access theirs due to the bonkers questions about loans they've never had. We use MyEQ to keep tabs on that bureau for them. It's an EQ site, but the info isn't quite as complete as ACR, unfortunately, and I don't know whether it's useful for judging DoFD on CAs. It might not be any better than CK.

@Slabenstein I would expect you probably thought of this, but when I'm helping someone, I always make them have credit karma or Experian open so they can make sure they answer those questions accurately. Or are they kicking SO out with accurate answers?

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Slabenstein — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 05:35:40 GMT

Accurate answers. "None of the above" to everything they put up, but the ID verification disagrees. From what I've read here, others have the same problem w/ EQ specifically.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 06:18:08 GMT

@Slabenstein I hate to start you going down the rabbit hole, but you need to pull SO’s LEXIS-NEXIS and correct the bull crap in there and that should fix that.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 10:47:11 GMT

@Slabenstein wrote:
Accurate answers. "None of the above" to everything they put up, but the ID verification disagrees. From what I've read here, others have the same problem w/ EQ specifically.

That is too bad, for me and SO it is always 3 out of 4 questions are "none of the above" and they always ask 3 different questions that are "none of the above" but always the same question for number 4 that has an actual answer. I think it is strange.

Re: Help with a roadmap - 6+ Years Gone

Slabenstein — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 15:20:17 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Slabenstein I hate to start you going down the rabbit hole, but you need to pull SO’s LEXIS-NEXIS and correct the bull crap in there and that should fix that.

We did, or at least tried to. LN told us they had no info on file for them.