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Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

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Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

Long time lurker, first time poster. 

Working on repairing my credit and have decided to tackle it more aggressively in 2022. Here's my current position, plan, and some goals. Please tell me if I'm missing anything: 

 

Scores: 559TU/561EQ/631EX (according to Credit Karma and Experian apps)


Credit Cards:

NFCU Cash Rewards: $4,800/$5,000 no lates

NFCU GoRewards: $1,400/$1,700 no lates

Cap1 Platinum: $479/$500 I think there are a few lates on this one but none within the last year 

Cap1 Quicksilver: $472/$500 no lates 

Cap1 Walmart: $128/$1,000 no lates 

Apple Card: $245/$250 no lates 

 

Other accounts: 

NFCU Auto loan $21,000 @ 9.92% 

 

Baddies: 

- Charge off/Collections:

Credit One in 2019 for $772. (Agreed to a PFD with Resurgent. Just paid the remainder of my balance today, the collection should hopefully fall off within 30-45 days.)
- Geico in 2015 for $83. (I hadn't realized I owed this until I tried to sign back up with Geico years later and they told me it had been placed into collections. Long story.) Should fall off 12/22 

- Target for $430 in 2015. Should fall off 12/22 

 

Clearly 2015 was a rough year for me. Since then I haven't let anything go into collections with the exception of 1 card that I forgot to set autopay up for when I went to boot camp (CreditOne.)

And of course my current issue is charging way too much to my cards. This stops now and will only be reserved for absolute emergencies. 

I plan to stop using my cards as previously stated and work towards paying them down aggressively this year. I plan to try to refinance my car loan when I'm eligible in March to free up more cash to do so, so I'm hoping that paying the collection and paying down my other balances will help my score enough to make a significant difference. 

I'm going to wait for the other collections to fall off naturally and hopefully that will help even more. I'm also considering requesting a CLI with NFCU when I get my balances down to less than 30%. 

My goals are to have a 0 balance on all my Cap1 and Apple cards, pay off at least 50% of my NFCU cards and ultimately, as close to a 700 score as possible by the end of the year. 

My question is, is this possible? Realistic? Anything I'm missing/more I could possibly do this year to make this happen? 

Any advice and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. Don't go easy on me. 

10 REPLIES 10
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

You seem to be in pretty good shape. Your scores are being weighed down by having all the cards close to the max. you'd probably get a 40 point jump by paying them off. If you just whittle them down over the next year you could have a blemish free report and should easily hit the 700 club by New Years 2022.

 

Most of the baddies are dropping off au naturale so you don't even have to sweat them.

 

The only thing left are the lates on the Cap 1 Platinum. I put a link below that others have been successful with for writing goodwill letters to the CEO. Should work as long as your willing to make the effort. Good luck!

 

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/Capital-One-Goodwill-Letter-Accepted/m-p/609...

 

 

Message 2 of 11
jrwa81
Regular Contributor

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

This looks like a solid plan and should be very doable.  I would just let those baddies from 2015 fall right off.  You don't need to do anything with those since they're about to age off your reports and will be gone very soon.  Your primary focus right now should definitely be paying those credit cards down to lower your utilization.  That alone will make a tremendous difference since utilization makes up 30% of your credit scores.  Ideally, you want your credit utilization to be right around 10%, but definitely not over 30%.  I've been where you are with nearly maxed out cards and once I paid them way down, my scores shot way up. 

 

Don't pay any attention to your scores on Credit Karma.  Those are Vantage scores and are totally irrelevant.  Nobody uses those.  You want to be looking at your actual FICO scores.  The only thing that Credit Karma is good for is being able to see what is on your Transunion and Equifax reports.  If you're able to swing it, I'd strongly recommend signing up for the $29/month plan with Experian, which monitors all 3 bureaus and gives you all of your FICO 8 scores.  You get daily updates on your Experian score and monthly updates on Equifax and Transunion scores.   That will be a very good way to track your progress.  I'd be lost without my Experian subscription.  

Message 3 of 11

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

Thank you for the advice on the goodwill letter! I'll get started on that next week and see if I have any luck. 

Message 4 of 11

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

I agree, I really regret letting my utilization get to be so high. I'm going to try my best to pay them down as much as I can this year. I'm in a specific situation where my expenses are now a little higher than I was ever anticipating them to be at this point in my career but I was recently promoted and I'm hoping to refinance my car for a lower payment to free up extra funds to do so. 

I also forgot to add, my mother added me as an authorized user on two of her cards, both of which have lower utilization and higher credit lines than any of mine. It's greatly increased my average age of credit (2 years to 12 years) and lowered my overall utilization but increased the amount of "my" revolving credit card debt. Is it worth it to stay on these cards because of the other factors or could the amount owed on those cards be weighing my score down as well? Something I just thought of. 

And along the lines of refinancing my car, is there a way to lower the APR on existing credit cards to pay them down faster? 

Thank you again for the advice and words of encouragement! 

Message 5 of 11
jrwa81
Regular Contributor

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated



Trustfactortech@gmail(dot)com did a fantastic job on my credit, I had a very low credit score I couldn't get approved for any credit cards, which was very disappointing for me. I started Fixing my credit in September of 2021. and now my credit score is 700+ thanks , Quality credit repair for everything


You don't need to hire anyone to fix your credit.  There is nothing that any "credit repair expert" can do that you can't do on your own.  It's a complete waste of time and money.  They don't have a magic wand to remove negative items and increase your scores overnight or in a week, a month, etc.  All that they do are file disputes on your behalf, which are no more effective than if you were to file disputes on your own, and you shouldn't even be disputing things that are valid in the first place.  All that you need to do to improve your credit is take care of any collections and/or charge offs that you have by contacting either the original creditors or the collection agencies to try and negotiate a settlement and a PFD.  Only you can do that.  If there are any inaccuracies on your report that are hurting your score, you can dispute them on your own.  I don't understand why anyone would pay somebody to do something so simple.  Save that money and use it to pay down credit cards, loans, or collections.

Message 6 of 11

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

Completely agree, I ignored because I assumed it was spam. I don't think my situation is dire enough to consider seeking professional help from an advisor or anything, I just gotta pay down my cards and try to rectify old mistakes from my early twenties lol. 

Message 7 of 11
jrwa81
Regular Contributor

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated


@goldilocks1775 wrote:

Completely agree, I ignored because I assumed it was spam. I don't think my situation is dire enough to consider seeking professional help from an advisor or anything, I just gotta pay down my cards and try to rectify old mistakes from my early twenties lol. 


Exactly!  I made plenty of mistakes in my 20s.  I was able to buy my first home when I was only 24, but I still made careless mistakes after that and then I had to clean up my mess once I had finally gotten my act together and realized that credit is actually kind of important, especially when you're a homeowner and have a very costly repair or if you want to refinance or take out a home equity line of credit, or if you want to buy a car and not require a ginormous down payment and have a monthly payment that's twice what it should be, LOL.  It can totally be done.  If I was able to do it, anybody can.  Getting utilization under control will be a HUGE help.  Utilization has almost as much of an impact on your scores as payment history does, so it's a huge factor.  Credit cards can either really help you or really hurt you depending on how you use them.  I learned that the hard way myself.  When I was younger, I always thought that as long as I was at least making the minimum payments every month, I'd have great credit scores.  Well, when you consistently have 60-70% utilization like I did, not so much, LOL.  Once I paid my cards way down to a far more reasonable and manageable level, my utilization significantly decreased my scores jumped about 60-70 points.  It's crazy that high utilization can harm your scores even more than a collection account!

Message 8 of 11
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

@goldilocks1775 do you mind me asking what your credit score was for you NFCU auto loan approval? Do you know what Fico Scoring Model and bureau they HP from?. I have similar data points with scores hovering around 630'-650's with 145k income. Wondering what my chances are on getting approval for $75k auto loan w/ $11k down on $86,000 vehicle. Thanks!

Message 9 of 11
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit Rebuild plan… Advice appreciated

You have the determination and motivation to do something, now you have to act..

I would start with these balances, way to high, this is low hanging fruit and should bump your score a little bit for a win and more motivation..

 

Get that Utilization down, everything else will fall into place...

 

 

 

Credit Cards:

NFCU Cash Rewards: $4,800/$5,000 no lates

NFCU GoRewards: $1,400/$1,700 no lates

Cap1 Platinum: $479/$500 I think there are a few lates on this one but none within the last year 

Cap1 Quicksilver: $472/$500 no lates 

Cap1 Walmart: $128/$1,000 no lates 

Apple Card: $245/$250 no lates 

Message 10 of 11
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