Hi all, new to the forum though ive visited and lurked from time to time the last couple years leading up to bk last year. and looking for some input from what appears to be a very knowledgeable and experienced group here on just where to go from here...
A little background. I got in way too deep ten years ago after high school, followed by a nasty divorce and some medical issues that had left me with almost 100k in medical debt and others by June of last year. At that time collections had piled up and there was no way I could see to be able to pay off those and the medical bills. I filed ch7 (by myself) May of last year and successfully had it discharged in September of last year. The only debt that I was left with following that was about 15k in student loans which are once again in deferment since I have returned to college to complete my bachelors degree (on scholarship w/ no loans!!!)
Since my bk I have done some cleaning up and have only a few negatives showing on my credit reports which include a capital one card and a 1st premiere card that were included in my bk and some lates from three years ago on my student loans and of course the bankruptcy.
I have had ALL of my collections fall off or removed from all three credit reports. (was truly a happy day when that happened)
I have no car loans or mortgages in my history, ever as I have always rented and paid in full for cars upfront.
I now have a secured Capital 1 card ($200 CL since March) and a secured discover it card ($300 CL since May) (wonderful with the fico score monthly) both of which I learned about here. In my occasional lurking and prior to membership as I really want to do things right this time. I have identity guard monitoring and myfico score watch to try and keep up on things now and budget wise I really do much better than ever before in my life.
My utilization is a little high at 50% on these I obviously hadn't read about the utilization strategies before now, I am paying those down this month and have paid these on time religiously.
Current FICOs I have are EQ 620 and TU 606.
Where should I go from here?
Apply for some sub prime store cards and credit cards and let those age, try to get a auto loan also.
any suggestions on which to try
Oh hrm.
At most I'd add one more credit card currently, and that's not really necessary with what you've described. 2 cards maxxes out the important part of the scorecard, 3 cards just allows you to gain a few more points at the margin from a FICO perspective, though it does help thicken up the file but sounds like you have stuff on your file already so that's not quite as important as building out of the gate.
I'm not a big fan of store cards: if you don't shop there and if the rewards aren't better than what you get on your bank / CU cards, skip them. Walmart is probably the best of the bunch as it's so generic as to be helpful in a pinch on just about anything, but I don't know their underwriting policies for post BK consumers. A good alternate secured card if you decide a 3rd card is warranted would be SDFCU's or maybe DCU's if they're BK friendly (which I don't know that they are), but really, I'd suggest doing something else with the cash and wait for a bit till you can acquire unsecured credit which is likely about a year from now.
If you can swing the deposit, take $500 and open a share secured loan at Alliant CU: you'll get the $500 right back in the 100% LTV loan, it'll be an installment tradeline on your report, and the cost on their 2% APR, 4 year product is on the order of $20 in interest annually, or less than the AF's on many subprime / secured cards, and it lands on a completely different part of the score card which is nothing but goodness.
Well I was going to just add one more as Capital One had offerred me an unsecured card (already I was surprised) it's low limit, but its unsecured and can help me get my utilization down... (learning from this site already!) In addition I paid down the balances on the two cards I already had. I was reading around also and saw how everyone seemed to rave about Navy Federal and realized that my grandfather is retired from the Navy, low and behold I applied there for checking and savings and was also offerred a $500 unsecured Navy Federal CashRewards Visa!!! After all of the awesome reviews about them here I had to accept.
So now the question is again, what do I do now!? lol
That is fully what I intend to do as well. To be perfectly honest this is the first time I've had four credit accounts, so I'm gonna tread lightly lol.
As far as after the six months, come February what should my next steps be?? I don't have any collections to work on getting off my CR's... inquiries are nothing I can change until they fall off, though I only have 4-5 as it is I believe on each report. I am trying to get the lates taken off of my direct loans accounts, which for some reason are showing up twice anyways as direct loans and fed loan servicing? I am hoping I can persuade them to do so as they are from some time ago, well before my bk and all of my loans are in deferment.... although for some reason some show 0 balance and included in bankruptcy, which is incredibly inaccurate so I'm working on that, none of my student loans were discharged, it's impossible lol.
Long term I hope I can get a couple lates from an old cap 1 account gw'd off once I have these two accounts with them positive and good history for at least a year. I lost the account in bk but I didn't burn them per se as I had no balance at the time that I filed on that account. Obviously they must agree since they have given me two credit cards since then..
I am hoping after some more established payment history I could perhaps get an apple cc to finance an imac to replace my aging computer at home and further build a credit history.... also would the navcheck I have read so much about be in play months down the road once I'm firmly established with NFCU perhaps?
