Hi Everyone! It's been a long time on my Credit journey. My credit was all the way down to the 500s in 2015 due to medical problems. In 2016 I shouldered the burden and started again. I had a discharged school loan with Sallie Mae, 2 discharged credit cards and about $12,000 in medical debt. I got all the medical debt up off of me (all these different collection agencies omg), starting with Dave Ramsey plan all of 2016, then easing up off of full Dave Ramsey in 2017 and applying for more cards the better things got. I just checked my credit again on the free credit reports sites (annual credit report dot com), and I payed $1 to Experian to check the credit scores.
****A note about Expierian's $1 credit score check service - you have to cancel within 7 days or you will get charged $15 for thier monthy monitoring service. When you go to cancel, their AI that answers the phone - is HORRENDOUS. It tries to not serve you the correct prompts and hangs up on you. I had to call back several times and "guestimate" what the question was they were asking for such as soc. sec. #, zip code, numerical portion of address and so forth. After trying a couple times, I randomly got the number combinations correct and was connected to someone in India to cancel my subscription. She says it's cancelled but this service was so shady that I'm going to have to keep a close eye on Experian to make sure it is really cancelled. Experian is really scraping the bottom of the barrel with these practices. When will USA corporations, especially ones that are a Public Service like Experian, learn that USA Citizens will NOT be defrauded by shady moves like these???!!!! Why is there not a law against this??? Ok, anyway.....****
Ok, so i am up to Experian 678, Equifax 735 and Transunion 678 as of last night.
I'm excited to have broken into the "700 club" finally AT LEAST with one credit beureau, Equifax. I'm curious - does everyone else have a higher Equifax score?
I know that I am still in the 600s on Experian and Transunion partially due to applying for credit often. I wanted to have available credit of AT LEAST $10,000 just in case I had terrible problems like I did in 2013. I have also saved an emergency fund, not big enough but it exists and is drawing some interest in a high yeild savings. I'm working on making that bigger. It's comforting to know that should my car develop serious problems, and should the bank not want to give me a loan for a new one for any reason, I could simply purchase a used car with my cash and/or credit and keep right on rolling. I feel like things like this are more important than keeping a high score - FIRST ESTABLISH YOUR SAFETY AND SECURITY, THEN - get fancy with the high scores. USA is not the place to play around right now, they will seriously deny you and then you will be trying to walk through the snow to do things, shivering standing out in the cold waiting for the bus or train.
The only thing that is still on my credit report that is negative, are the bad/late marks from 2013 and 2014 with Sallie Mae. Does anyone know how to get those taken off?? I have rehabbed my loan and it was picked up by Sun Trust. It's down to $6800 now. I am paying monthy on it, but didn't want to fully attack it because I wanted to build my emergency fund and get out of my medical debt first. Maybe this year would be a good time to just attack that $6800 and get it off there. Will that cause the Sallie Mae bad/late marks to fall off as well?
I am thankful to be firmly in the "GOOD" credit section now and climbing.
Starting Score: 567
