No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
I vaguely knew about credit scores when I applied for a car loan in july of 2005 with my mom. I knew my credit wasn't the best as I had (or was about to have) 2 charge-offs and one cc becoming closed. The loan officer had this look of disbelief when he said that my (EX) score was around 450 (don't remember exactly)!!! He said with that score there was NO WAY I would even be able to get on the loan : (
After that I only had student loans in my name and it wasn't until june 2007 that I got a legitimate cc offer in the mail from Cap1. It had a $39 annual fee but I decided I was ready to take back control of my credit so I went for it and I WAS APPROVED!!!
It wasn't until october 2008 that I (can't exactly remember why) started doing some FICO research and happened upon this AWESOME community. I finally decided to purchase my EQ score that same month and was a bit disappointed to find my score was 592. I realized that was because my only CC was carrying a big balance and last year I had a big medical bill that went into collection. Since then I have worked very hard putting any extra money I could towards paying off my CC balance as well as my medical collection.
I expect my score to keep going up each month with all the knowledge I've gained here!!! : )
The lowest score I was aware of was my EX score in the 450's and my EX score today is 647!!!
When I REALLY started working on rebuilding my score my EQ was 592. Today it sits at 635.
So slowly but surely I'm improving and that's all I can ask for. I'm probably gonna go nuts when I get scores in the 700s though-lol!!!!
My lowest was around 570 on all 3 bureau's around December 08.
I had 5 collections on my account and an unpaid tax lien. I picked away at the collections and did PFD on each of them, but only successful on 3 out of the 5. The others say paid collection, but weren't re-dated so they still say 2005 which is a good thing (if there is any good thing about collections) as they look older and dont' carry as much weight. The tax lien was filed on me for a year I was a partial resident of another state while working and simply thought i only had to file in my home state. Anyways, i filed my taxes (for 2001 mind you) and it turns out they would have owed me almost 1K! Stupid me....after 2 years you forfeit any money owed to you in taxes....but they can come after you forever it seems!
Fast forward to today, 3/28/09
EQ:716 TU: 668 EX: ?? (but FAKO says 641) - I imagine it's a little higher than that because I have since received a 3000.00 limit on a Zales card and got a CLI on CAP1 cc.
2005 was 580-ish
2009 is 808
I had some idea about FICO score but really didn't know how it impacted me. A couple of years ago I had signed up for some kind of Suze Orman package deal...but again I really didn't understand how these different scores affected me. So, I know my low score in 2006 was 620.
Then in Dec. 2008 b/c of the down turn in the economy and no one is safe from layoffs...I decided to start paying down debt..and start an Emergency Fund. I knew that I had allot of discretionary money after I paid the minimum on my cc bills. So, I started making extra payments on my cc's and putting money towards my EF of $1,000. I found myfico again and ran my EX score in Feb 12, 2009 and my score was 682. It was pure luck that I sign onto the webpage the day before they stopped offering the EX score. Then in March 2009, I decided to sign up for the 30 day free trial for myfico and just found out today b/c of the Score Alert that my EQ score is 719!!!!!!!!!!!!
STARTING EQ FICO: 478 (yeah...I know) 4/2011
NOW EQ FICO: 590 (getting better, ways to go still) 8/2012
I have 2 more collections to get off the report, then all that is left is OC cc companies that are still reporting...
528 Exp 11/2007
Around 520 In early 2009. I don't remember exactly. I only had one OD LOC for 1k from Union Bank which I didn't even know about at the time and several CAs and a paid tax lien. The CAs were from utilities that hadn't been closed properly when I moved and the tax lien was my own damned fault. It had been paid immediately when I found out about it. I hadn't needed or used credit in close to 10 years at the time so my file was otherwise empty.
May 2012 - 490s
July 2012 - 610
Septempber 2012 goal - 640 or more!