Low CLI Purgatory

[Anonymous]

Hello !

I'm new to My Fico and thought I would come here for help as I appear to keep spinning my wheels in mud. The problem is that I can't seem to get out of this low score purgatory. All 3 of my scores tend to hover around 590 to 600 but never go much higher. Right now I only have 5 accounts - Walmart, Cap 1 QS, Fingerhut, Target , Merrick Bank card. My payment history is good with all of them. Haven't had a late payment in 2 years ( WM)  and the rest - never late. My utilization could be better but with my payment history I can't understand why that would prevent me from at least being in the mid - 600 range. Other than this , I have a couple of baddies from the past that still haunt, but are about to fall off in the next few months to a year, so I'm just gonna allow them to disappear and not touch them. Student loans are in good standing but in deferment. Please help guys as I am at wits end and feel like giving up. I'm making all my payments and doing everything I should and I'm not moving in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

DEROGS:

It sounds like you have some from 2-3 years ago, and also some from 6 years ago.  You don't mention what these are or how severe they are, so it is hard to assess how much they could be hurting your score.  Certainly they are hurting your score some, and you'd benefit from heading over to the rebuilding forum to discuss strategies with the folks there for getting all of them removed.

CC UTILIZATION:

You mention that this "could be better" -- but without knowing specific numbers it is hard to guess the score impact.  Certainly the right move for you is to pay all cards to $0 and then continue to use one card for something small.  This should help you substantially. and it needs to be your baseline to help assess the impact of the derogs.

CREDIT MIX

It sounds like you have no open installment loans.  If so, you should consider implementing the Share Secure Loan Technique, which is described in the first 2-3 posts of the thread below.  It will get you (roughly) another 30 points.

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Adding-an-installment-loan-the-Share-Secu...

GOALS

It's unclear whether your goal is to have a higher scores (implied by the actual body of what you wrote) or to get a credit limit increase (implied by the subject header).

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hello !

I'm new to My Fico and thought I would come here for help as I appear to keep spinning my wheels in mud. The problem is that I can't seem to get out of this low score purgatory. All 3 of my scores tend to hover around 590 to 600 but never go much higher. Right now I only have 5 accounts - Walmart, Cap 1 QS, Fingerhut, Target , Merrick Bank card. My payment history is good with all of them. Haven't had a late payment in 2 years ( WM)  and the rest - never late. My utilization could be better but with my payment history I can't understand why that would prevent me from at least being in the mid - 600 range. Other than this , I have a couple of baddies from the past that still haunt, but are about to fall off in the next few months to a year, so I'm just gonna allow them to disappear and not touch them. Student loans are in good standing but in deferment. Please help guys as I am at wits end and feel like giving up. I'm making all my payments and doing everything I should and I'm not moving in the right direction. Thanks in advance.

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Revolving utilization is a huge factor. Since your utilization 'could be better', work on that.

[Anonymous]

Is this also true if your utilization is very low?  I was blown away by the credit limit I got from Navy Fed and so now my utilization across all cards hovers at 1-2%. I get big green text that says I'm doing excellent with it and there's a FB credit group that I just lurk in that keeps saying to keep all cards at some oddly exact number like 4.6% for maximum FICO points.  So I'm a bit confused.

[DollyLama]

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@Anonymous wrote:

 I get big green text that says I'm doing excellent with it and there's a FB credit group that I just lurk in that keeps saying to keep all cards at some oddly exact number like 4.6% for maximum FICO points.  So I'm a bit confused.

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Don't keep a balance on ALL CCs at all. At statement cut, ALL CCs should report a 0 balance, with only ONE reporting a balance with minimum <8.9% of that one cards total tradeline. If you wish to pay around monthly and have 4.6 utilization on that card you can. 

We call it AZEO, all zero except one.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hello !

The problem is that I can't seem to get out of this low score purgatory. All 3 of my scores tend to hover around 590 to 600 but never go much higher.

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If your payment history isn't perfect and your utilization is high, 2/3 of your score is being severely hindered.  You could easily be leaving 50-100 points on the table for each of these two categories.  That's 100-200 points total, meaning if you fixed both categories you'd be in the 700-800 range.

As CGID pointed out, you didn't give any concrete information regarding your late payments (severity, number of them, exact age) or your exact aggregate revolving utilization percentage currently.  Those pieces of information would allow us to give you a better idea of what you'd stand to gain point wise by cleaning up each factor.

[Anonymous]

Can I jump in here and ask for advice on my situation or would you like me to open a new topic?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Can I jump in here and ask for advice on my situation or would you like me to open a new topic?

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Either way is fine!  If it's related to the topic of the OP, here cool.  If it's an unrelated topic, you may be best served to start a new thread, as it will gain better exposure and potentially more responses that way.

[Anonymous]

As of this morning my FICO scores are as follows:

Exp 632 Eq 642 TU 643

Credit util: around 1-2% usually.  All cards carry a zero balance for the most part.  I shuffle through them every now and then.  

Payment history: 8 missed payments in the past 7 years.  All from Fedloan and their error which doesn't seem fixable. All other cards are paid in full at the end of the month.  

4 Negative Accounts

CapOne charge off - DOFD in late 2011. Long story short: no one can show me anything about this account and it was so long ago I don't remember. I have two other accts with them all good standing that I've offered good will towards but they won't budge.  Falling off soon.

Bank credit card that was closed with a balance, I moved and forgot to update my address and missed it.  Was bought by MCM and I paid in full PTD.  Schedueld to fall off early 2018. original account listed as charge off with no balance.

Working on my AAoA. Right now its kinda low because my student loans were paid off and that brings me to FedLoan Servicing.

Student loan missed payments

While under deferrment, FedLoan Servicing mistakenly reported my loan as in repayment status and 120+ days late for 8 months in 2015.  The loans have since been completely paid off and they are unable to updaet payment records on closed accounts. Not sure how to handle this one since CFPB does not handle federal student loans and they are not cooperating at all.

One collections account

This one also falls off 2018.  Medical debt that I would gladly do a PFD but the agency wants their pound of flesh.  They've tried reaging accounts before so just watching carefully. 

[Anonymous]

Two more... my Perkins loan shows up as a collections account, with missed payments on it.  This is the one that went into deferrment. I have documentation stating this from the Dept of Ed and people that work there via email.  They will not change it back to educational loan even though I paid it in full.

The capOne card shows open status, over credit limit and it hasn't had a payment in 84 months., or some ridiculous high number.