Some folks will come along and start giving you great advice on real activities and priorities. Congratulations on tackling this effort.
I am going to start with this: Invest the $1 it requires to find out accurate, complete, REAL FICO scores across the three bureaus, and use them as your score benchmark. Do it today. More important than the scores, however, are the data behind them (which you seem to have some idea of).
A couple thoughts and questions:
- Do not plan to charge Peter (mythical Discover card) to pay Paul (other credit debts).
- Do plan to retire collection debt ASAP. If that is "next month" ...ok, but "today" is better.
- Are you actively receiving collection attempts on the BofA charge off and the Charter Communications collections?
- Ask the auto finance company who they report to and when.
- Lastly, it sounds like you are in quite a recoverable position. Just remember that the most important factor of credit health is financial responsibility. Don't do things for the sake of credit scores which jeopardize financial well-being.
@Anonymous wrote:
Where do I get the $1 FICO sores at?
I have had success using the advertised Creditworks premium trial at Experian. As long as you cancel within a week, your trial will provide you with a one time pull of all three bureaus giving you reports (and scores) which you can save and use as a baseline. After cancelling before the week is out, you can keep the daily Experian portion ... until you feel you may want to try the CreditWorks product again.
@Anonymous wrote:Along with the Dicover Card offer, I did get a letter from Sunrise Credit Service which seems to be covering the BOA account. The "we would like to work with you and so on..." I will work on that after I get the Charter one taken care of. It's smaller and I can do it in one hit. The BOA account I am looking at splitting it to 5 or 6 months of payments in order to still take care of my household.
Regarding this piece above, ensure you understand the principle of PFD before you negotiate with the debt collectors. I do not know the proclivities of Enhanced Recovery or Sunrise in this area. Are these two agencies reporting in additional to the original creditors?
Is the original Charter account listed in the credit report as delinquent as well, or just ERC?
Please take this recomendation with a grain of salt, as I have NO experience with ERC or Charter. Perhaps someone else can weigh in:
Assuming you know what PFD is, it may be worth your while to contact the original creditor (Charter) to see if they will recall the debt in exchange for PFD of the tradeline. I think ERC may be unique, so it really would be worth your time to research if there is a specific way you should approacbh that. Hopefully by now you have done some research on what PFD is in general, and why it should be attempted as you settle your debts.
@Anonymous wrote:It has been a minute since my last post so here is a little update. I did get a discover secure card and threw $200 on it. I am in my 4th paid billing cycle. I have been getting $20 in gas then pay that off the next month. With the card came a FICO score with TU. So 599 to 603 so far. Charter was paid off and it does state PIF. On my last old debt now with BOA. There is a new credit agency contacting me about them with a small dicounted offer. I do have the funds to contact BOA themselves . From my research, BOA does not give any breaks. No biggie. This one still shows as 123% revolving utilization so it needs to go bye bye. Hopefully after that, maybe hook up another secure card and start working it as well. Will be getting rid of BOA and hopefully get bigger gains in the near future.
Nice progress!
How long ago did you PIF the Charter account? Is this showing as Charter themselves or some collection agency?
If it was recently paid within the last 30-45 days it may still delete on its own. If it has been longer than that then you may wish to start a GW (Goodwill) campaign to request the tradeline be removed altogether. If you have NO collection accounts at all, you should expect to see a nice boost in score.
Bring BOA to 0 balance on the charge off, either by PIF or settlement, will also stop that monthly reporting of the continued deliquency which is also holding your score down. Improvement will come bit by bit each month as it ages.
You can reactivate your "trial" again at anytime for another $1 and get all your scores. Just remember to cancel before the monthly charge date occurs.
If you clear these items before you pull the trigger on your next card you may find yourself with more options other than secured.
