@Anonymous wrote:Hello! This is my first forum post. I have lurked on myFico for years when looking for credit card qualifications and such but I decided that I need to make an account and seek out personal help.
I really made a mess of my credit over the past decade. I got out of the military about 10 years ago and seemingly did everything I could to ruin my credit...like a bull running through a china shop. I sought out help from Lexington Law about a year or so ago, and although they helped a little I still can't qualify for the most basic credit card. My scores are all over the place... EX is 630, EQ is 535, and TU is 513. I'm using the Experian Identityworks and credit monitoring to pull my FICO 8 scores.
I used a service called "Credit Boost" on the Experian site a few days ago and it raised my EX by about 70 points. So I decided to try and apply for one of the cards they recommended....Cap One Platinum. I was denied. I have only had one real credit card in my life and one store card years ago. I had a Military Star card as well when I was in the service, but I made the bad decision of stopping payments when I got out. Like I said, I made plenty of mistakes when I was younger...and I'm just trying to fix them now but I don't know where to start.
I have a few medical bills that I am working on getting rid of (trying to get the VA to pay for them since it's service connected), there are a couple of doc-in-the-box bills I need to take care of as well. All of these are in collections by the way....I owe about $5-6k.
Is there any hope for me? What do I need to do? All I want is to be able to apply for financing on a smart phone or have a credit card like everyone else. I know I was irresponsible in the past, but I'm older now and ready for the responsibility. Thanks for reading.
Yes there is hope. Time heals all wounds in the FICO world. The passage of time, without new problems, increases your credit scores. As to things you can do.
1. You are right to keep working on the negatives. They will all age off, but you can sometimes speed up the process. In addition to Lexington Law's work, you can send out verification letters to the bureaus on your own. That will sometimes speed up the process.
2. You can try to pay off as many of the debts as possible. When doing so, try to negotiate "pay for delete" -- i.e. once you pay them they'll remove the negative item from the reports. But if you can't get them to agree to that, still try to pay them off. And keep sending verification letters.
3. Best place for you to start building a positive credit track record is to take out a secured card. A lot of people on this forum speak highly of the Discover secured card as a good place to start. Also, you can join a credit union and they will usually have a secured credit card offering.
