Credit Recovery Journey

[Anonymous]

I was just approved for another card!
$300 limit on Indigo credit card.
Plus my Capital One Platinum limit was increased to $500 because I made the first six payments on time.
I now have $1,200 total line of credit with three different cards less than six months after my Chapter 7 discharge.
My score before I filed was 418.
My score increased to 452 after I filed because my utilization decreased.
My score today is 592, I’ve kept my utilization down and have yet to miss any payments since my bankruptcy discharge. My score has increased 174 points in less than a year.
I don’t think this progress is too bad. Almost at 600. Next goal is 700 then someday I may be back to the 780 score I had before I got into the crippling debt I was in.
Gonna lay off on apps for a while and focus on maintaining good post BK payment history.

[Jannelo]

Congrats!  You've made tremendous progress.

[FireMedic1]

Nice progress so far. Let those 3 age at least 6 months before your next move. You didnt mention any installments. Grab a self lender or a credit union loan. Then you'll have the FICO rebuild bonus score. Good Luck! Keep it up!

[Anonymous]

The only installment loans I have are my student loans which survived the bankruptcy and I’ve been religiously keeping up with the payments on those.
My dad co-signed the private student loan so I kept up with the payments even during the automatic stay.
I do want to do a credit builder installment loan, the only thing that’s been stopping me is that I’m not 100% sure I can afford the payments and it wouldn’t make sense to take on a credit building obligation and risk defaulting on it.
My income is going up though, because I am deploying in a few weeks so my active duty pay will be more than I was making at my civilian job, I’ll probably do one then.

[FireMedic1]

Well since you already have installment loans. You dont need any more. Even if you paid all of them off except 1. Thats a good thing. FICO likes 1 loan. Student, car, home, or whatever type except consumer finance loans. So your all set. Keep up the great rebuild you on. Slow and steady wins the race.

[Anonymous]

I had a car loan which I paid off before the bankruptcy and it still reports to my credit as paid off. I haven’t had any car loans since April of 2018.

[Anonymous]

I have two student loans reporting on my credit. One private, one federal. The National Guard will start paying the federal one but the payment history will still count on my credit.

[FireMedic1]

Nothing wrong with that. Your doing fine. Your scores will climb as time goes by. Looks like your on schedule to reach higher scores in time and that will open more doors to better cards and such. Keep it up. Dont get excited too much as scores climb and go out and go app crazy. Slow and steady and you'll get there as I have. Good Luck!

[Anonymous]

My goal is to get a VA mortgage when I come back from deployment, so hopefully my score will be good enough by then and enough time will have passed for the bankruptcy to not matter as much.