@Anonymous wrote:I have been lurking on this site, and others, for all of 2011, at least, and I have benefited a lot from the advice.
At the start of 2011 my scores were in the low 600s with the main culprit being high utilization and some late payments and a Dell charge off on my report. I committed to fixing the problem and so far the results have been very positive. I have managed to transform my credit usage from over 80% utilization (with high revolving balances) to under 20% utilization and no revolving balances (for 6+ months!).
My card mix in 2011 consisted of a Visa Classic no rewards card with a $500 CL from a local CU and a $3.5K CL UPromise Platinum Select from Bank of America. I had a few more cards in 2010, but closed them due to horrible customer service from the banks. I needed a card that could give me NFTF and went on a app spree to get one. That trend wasn't successful until I hit NFCU for a 16K CL Flagship Rewards Visa Signature (card still in mail!). With this card I'm going to officially put myself into gardening and stop the app mess.
The above is very condensed, but I also added a Discovery More $750CL and successfully got BoA to give me a $1.5K CLI to push my UPromise to $5K CL.
Now that I'm able to relax CC wise I'm going to deal with the Dell charge off. I took advantage of the no-fee BT offer to pull that Dell debt out of collections and I'll see if I can GW them into removing it from my report. Now to try and sail into the 700 club!
Thanks to everyone on this board for really opening my eyes as to what is important credit wise.
Congrats for coming into the Garden!! Welcome!
Nice going, congrats! See you in the garden. 