Hi Jeff, and welcome to our world of credit scoring! First things first is not, in my opinion, getting your credit score. It is getting a reliable credit report (CR).
Your credit score wont educate you, it will only frustrate you, and until you have cleaned-up your CR, is just prior history.
I only offer a few words of advice to those entering into the world of credit score improvement.
FIRST:
Review the contents of your credit report before focusing on your credit score.
If you are new to credit reporting and scoring, there is only one single step I first recommend.
The federal statue governing credit reporting is called the FCRA. Under the FCRA, you are entitled to one, totally-free credit report, once in each 12-months, from each credit reporting agency (CRA). The site is annualcreditreport.com. This is NOT a commercial site, and gives you the most complete credit report you can get as a consumer, for really, really free........ just dont bite on any of the side- offers for to purchase your score from them. Fist step, before credit scoring, is cleaning up your credit report.
SECOND. Review and clean up your CR.
Dont look at your CR in terms of accounts, Look at it in terms of each delinquency and derog in your CR.
Focus first on monthly delinquencies on each original creditor (OC) account.
Some you may recognize as legit, but others you may wish to dispute. How to dispute anything you dont agree with is why we are here.
List each monthly delinquency on each OC account by date and severity (e.g., 30-day late 5/2005; 60-day late 6/2005, etc)
Add 7 years from each individual delinquency, and you have a complete summary of when each monthly delinquency individually drops from your CR.
After doing that, then turn to each charge-off (CO) and collection (CA) in your CR.
The single date to identify for each CO and CA is the date of first monthly delinquency on the OC account that preceded the CO or CA. Just go back to the list of OC account delinquencies already compliled, and locate that date. Add 180 days to that DOFD, and the OC or CA must drop from your CR after 7 years from this date.
What to pay first, and how to address offers to pay, depends upon the severity and age of each derog. For each unpaid debt, first determine if the statute of limitations has expired. These have the potential for legal action. They call for priority consideration. You can get your state SOL for debt by googling on state name, statute of limitations, debt.
Know when your SOL begins, and its period of expiration (usually 3-6 years from your basic DOFD, but it varies).
If you have,in your hip-pocket, all of that info, then you can get good advice here. Without that background info, no one can tell you how to priortize you actions.
I look forward to your questions on your items of concern!
