New user - advice Appreciated

[Anonymous]

Hello to all-

I have been reading these boards for ideas for quite some time now.  Some I have used, some I should have listened to.  Finally decided to become a member to take full advantage of all the resources.

Regardless over the last six months I have gone credit crazy- opening anything to help expedite positive trade lines and payment history.  My credit tanked because of a student loan I completely neglected(forgot about).  So on those two separate sallie Mae accounts I have numerous 120 day late status'.  Good news is I caught up and been positive for 12 months straight, but my scores remained down.  I did the typical rebuild scenario - capital one secured, than got a quicksilver, but still my score barely crept up.  Let's just say comenity and synchrony must love me right now - 12 new accounts between both of them, with a horrendous 20 inquiries showing on my profile.

To my surprise though - scores shot up in the long run by adding these accounts.  I know it is time to 'garden' at this point.  Hoping for some advice as I want to purchase a home by next summer.  By keeping these new accounts good, low utilization and such, letting my inquiries age over 12 months - and my student loans reaching two years of consistent payments.  Do you think I could expect a decent overall improvement? My AOA is around 2 years now with all these new accounts.  I would provide my current scores but unsure which ones actually mean the most?

thank you for taking the time to read

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forum.

- Garden for sure. At this time you need to let those inquiries age before you do anything else.

- New accounts. Glad that you were able to get some new accounts. Depending on who you talk to and their own personal views on store cards, you are going to get different statements. IMO, store cards are viewed differently that credit cards. Out of all of the credit types, those are the lowest. Is having any bad, no, I have a Walmart one myself. If I were you, I would not get anymore though, and in the future, might want to start thinking about closing some of them

- Credit lines. Use what you have wisely. Make charges but make sure that when they report, your utilization is 9% or lower. The easiest way to do this for now is only make a couple of charges on your cards each month and pay all but 1 off before the statement closes.

- Late payments. Having as thin of a file as you do, your scores took a bigger hit than someone that has a thick file. Over time, they will hurt even less. Whatever you do, DO NOT MISS anymore payments.

If you use what you have wisely and sustain from applying for any new accounts for a while, you will start to see your scores go up and up. So to answer your main question, Yes, there should be a substantial improvement.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the feedback.

I will not be applying for anything anytime soon, and I will not miss anymore payments.

I know store cards are not great, but for my situation, they work great.  A little backstory- my wife is disabled, pretty much stuck in a bed.  I am the only source of income.(disability 3 years waiting). Yes, I opened a boatload of store cards but in my mind this makes sense.  Using lower limit store specific cards for online shopping only, being my wife's only way to shop. I feel like I do not need to worry about hackers or identity theft as bad.  I prefer not to put my personal banking info online to shop, to me that is a much higher risk.

Does my thinking make sense, or am I going to hurt my credit more in the long run?

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the backstory. It's hard to sit here and say exactly what it is going to do. You mentioned that they are low limit, over the next year you need to attemp to get some CLI's on those cards. When and if you try to obtain additional "credit" in the future, the higher the limit on your cards the better as most lenders like to offer limits in retroscpect with what you have, although that is not the case 100% of the time.

If what you do works for you, then that is great. If it were me, I would not have applied for all of those store cards, but that is just me. Having 1 or 2 secured cards and 1 or 2 store cards would have done the trick. You also need to remember that when you apply for credit, lenders are going to not just look at your score, but your entire profile. This includes what types of credit you have, cl's and the number of accounts that you have. Depending on what your income is, in the near furure having that many store cards could be an issue, but I am not 100% certain. I can talk with a family friend in the morning, he is the president of a bank to find out how they see this when they look at a profile like that.

i can't tell you exactly what is going to happen. Will all of that help your score, yeah, probably over the next 12 months. There are many ways that people go about building their credit profile. The way you chose might work for you, and if it does, congratulations. Hope for the best.

[jamie123]

The store cards are good for your situation. They will eventually drown your baddies with good marks from all those cards. That is however, an awful lot of store cards! Like the other poster mentioned, you might consider closing some of them a few years down the road.

You need to let the youngest store card age to 1 year and then app for 2 bank credit cards.