Hello,
My first post here after lurking daily for about 3 weeks and it has become addicting with the unlimited amount of info provided but my head is about to explode from too much information the last few days of non-stop reading and hoping to find some direction on how to best remedy my situation. I applied for 2 credit Cards before the holidays to take advantage of some offers after I joined creditkarma..... before December I was completely ignorant to the credit bureaus and the credit industry didn't know anything about utilization or Avergae Age...etc and still learn all kinds of pertinent info every time I log onto myfico...........
I didn't realize how poor my score was until I saw the report in CK, I now know that their score doesn't truly represent but used it as a guage to try and improve my credit by starting with lowering my utilation from %65 to %15 and saw my fako score jump about 85... after reading here for a while I have done a few other things to help improve it like All zero but one and my Fako score has gone from 585 to 720 now. I have 9 Credit Cards and no loans with my AAoA is 8 yrs 8 months but I have 2 majore issues hurting me from 2014..........
the first is 30 day late from Capital One in August 2015 and the other is a $468 collections accoutn from Jan 2014 from Portfolio Recovery and 3 HPs in last 2 months.....
what is the best way to help my score with these transgressions? I
s it a GW campaign for Cap One? Does that work with Cap One? I had read so many things about my Portfolio Account being a lost cause and would just have to ride it out until it expires but then today I found some posts about new optimism about leniancy from Portfolio.
Should I contact them and pay that ASAP to help my score and do I request them to delete file before I pay? Is there a difference on how they can report it to the CA after I pay that can change the effect on my credit scores?
I'm still learning many of the intimate details on how to garden and increase my scores but would really appreciate any advice on the best methods to remedy my 2 main issues
Kind Regards
edit - after some more reading just learned a couple new terms like balance chasing and CLD I had no idea about and worried maybe now that i zeroed balance 7/9 of my CC's that might happen now
-- and the more I read about the Prtfolio collection account the more unsure I am about it..... I originally thought it would fall off after so many years and it might be best not to address that debt or I would "restart" the clock on how long it remains on my credit report but now just looking at CK it looks like it was just reported again on Jan 9th.... so whatever I thought appearantly was wrong, it was originally an Amazon/Ge Capital 2012 Acct that was sent to Portfilio in 2014 for collections and looks to still be reporting monthly after 5 years * SOL here in Illinois is 5yrs
