@Anonymous
In one of your threads, you mention and ex spouse. Is it possible that they could have been car shopping with your info? Identity theft is actually most common with family members and close acquaintances.
Ex's have all your information because you filed taxes together etc... I still have my ex's SSN memorized and we've been separated 10 years. (Im probably safe from him because he couldn't remember my birthday or our anniversary 😂)
As @USMC_Winger @mentioned, focus on building your relationship with Navy. Put all your direct deposits there. you don't even have to leave the money there. I send my direct deposit to Navy then move it to my local CU where all my bill pays come from... but just the fact that they are seeing consistent deposits will help.
Open one of their easy saver CDS and move 50 bucks a pay period in there and watch it grow. Use your secured cards instead of your debit cards and pay in full every month. In about 3-6 months of doing this, see if you might qualify for an auto refi to replace guido the loan shark. Then after 3-6 months of that, THEN try applying for an unsecured credit card with them.
Do not be even a minute late paying on anything with them. Study @philadelphia's post on the Navy thread to learn how to be the model Bavy member.
If you hang tight for a year doing this, I suspect Navy will start showing you love, the skies will open, angels will sing and you'll be on your way.
Good luck!
@Anonymous wrote:
4) The car was 15K, I don't have a hope of a SSL for that. However, like you said and like my guy said, come back in a year when my credit will be better (look how much it's increased since I got it as you mentioned) and re-finance it and that's 100% my strategy.
Sorry, I wasn't clear on the amount. A Navy Fed SSL of any amount, paid down to a balance below 9.5% will suffice for max FICO points on credit mix and aggregate installment loan utilization categories when you have no other open installment loans. For easy reference:
Thanks to @spikeman768, here's a list of the loan amounts required for each loan term length @ 2.25% APR:
$250-$500 - max 6 month term
$501-$1000 - max 12 month term
$1001-$1500 - max 18 month term
$1501-$2000 - max 24 month term
$2001-$3000 - max 36 month term
$3001+ - max 60 month term
And thanks to @folks19, here are the loan amounts required for longer loan term lengths @ 3.25% APR:
$25,000 minimum loan amount for 61 to 84 months
$30,000 minimum loan amount for 85 to 180 month
5) I believe I can get one more secured card from a local CU, and it'll be a $500 one. Worth it?
If it graduates to a "keeper," like the Navy Fed secure nRewards CC and Discover IT Secured CC, with a non-trivial CL that won't be bucketed in the low CLs, then it would be worth applying for AFTER you've cleaned up your CRs some more and improved your FICO scores. I don't know which FICO score your local CU uses for approval, but before applying, I would aim for the equivalent to a 640 or better FICO 8 score (which ranges from 300 to 850), so that you have very good chances of both approval and graduation within 1 year or so.
I'll post again later to respond to more of your post.
@Anonymous wrote:3) I've been trying to leverage my 6 year relationship with NFCU but it hasn't gone anywhere. I had the 2 SSL I completed. I also had a secured card for 2Y 3M that I closed out (stupid I know, but I was frustrated it never graduated). I always kept that one below 30% and didn't miss a payment. My current cards are 1 year 6 months and 1 year 0 months. I use both cards, and would pay them down to less than 5% before each statement. Now I'm paying one down to 3% and one down to $0 to utilize the AZEO.
The two pledge loans were both 2 years, one was for 5K and one for 2.5K.
The good news is you have perfect payment histories with 5 Navy Fed credit products and 21 months average payment history on each one. Keep up the good work!
But ... Navy Fed isn't just focusing on your Navy Fed credit transactions for some of your denial reasons, as I initially thought. Navy Fed checks our CRs every month to see how we're doing with our other credit accounts. The "not enough debt management or property owner experience" denial reason when you have credit accounts more than 11 years old and many accounts opened since then likely indicates "not enough POSITIVE debt management or property owner experience."
So, continue doing what you're doing: PFD and GW every adverse item you can, especially on your TU and EQ CRs, let the rest of the paid adverse items age off your CRs, and show positive debt management on all of your open credit accounts. Show Navy Fed that your financial problems are in the past, and they don't have to worry about not getting paid in the future by having perfect payment histories on all of your credit accounts (not just Navy Fed accounts) and no adverse items reporting for at least the recommended 2 years.
More good news is that Navy Fed uses FICO 9 scores to evaluate new CC applicants (using the TU CR) and graduate secured nRewards CC holders (using the EQ CR). Your paid 3rd-party collections don't negatively impact your FICO 9 scores.
Keep in mind that it's harder to graduate the nRewards CC than to get approved for a new Navy Fed CC, so expect to get approved for a 3rd Navy Fed CC before your nRewards CCs graduate. It appears that this is due to Navy Fed using 2 different computer algorithms to determine whether to graduate the secured nRewards CC and to approve new CCs.
More (future) good news is that you can request early exclusion (EE) of any adverse items on your CRs, 6 months early removal for TU, 3 months early for EX, and 1 month early for EQ.
Now, about the 3rd CC for the AZEO method: I've seen increased scores reported in the range of 6 to 30 points with FICO 8 scores, depending upon the credit profile. One of the FICO categories the AZEO method optimizes is percentage of revolving accounts with a balance. So, if you have only 2 bankcards (VISA, M/C, AMEX, and Discover) and one of them reports $0 and the other reports a small balance, you should expect to get a small score boost. You'll see the rest of the score boost when you add a 3rd CC and use the AZEO method, but it's not a whole lotta points more. That's why everyone is advising you to continue to clean up your CRs to raise your FICO scores, and not get stuck with sub-prime CCs to weigh down your chances of getting approved for better CCs with higher CLs in the future.
Don't kick yourself for closing out your first secured nRewards CC. Most importantly, it has a long, perfect payment history. Back then you didn't know what you needed to graduate. Now you do: perfect payment histories, get rid of as many adverse items on your CRs as possible, knowledge that Navy Fed is watching your CRs for new adverse items reporting, and the passage of time.
Hopefully, the good news cheers you up and helps you stay the course on your journey to good credit.
@Anonymous, you probably already know this, but just in case you don't, the secure nRewards card graduates to the cashRewards card with 1.5% cash back. You only earn 1% cash back while your card is still secured, but at the time of graduation, whatever balance you have in points will be converted to 1.5 times as many points.
Just something else to look forward to as a reward for your hard work and patience. Good luck!
@USMC_Winger wrote:@Anonymous, you probably already know this, but just in case you don't, the secure nRewards card graduates to the cashRewards card with 1.5% cash back. You only earn 1% cash back while your card is still secured, but at the time of graduation, whatever balance you have in points will be converted to 1.5 times as many points.
Just something else to look forward to as a reward for your hard work and patience. Good luck!
That's kind of a cool feature, a retroactive point bump after graduation. The secured card I used last year paid 1% while secured, and then graduated to 3% for dining, 2% for groceries, and 1% for everything else, however, the cash rewards I earned in the six months my card was secured didn't grow. 
