Credit Rebuilding Journey

[Anonymous]

Hi all! First time poster here but have been reading these forums for about 8 months now while I begin my credit rebuilding journey. My scores were hovering around 490 this past December and I came here looking for advice; although I've never posted I'm eternally grateful to so many of you for both the motivation this forum has provided and the advice that has already taken me so far.

I'm curious to hear some wise words from some rebuilders who have achieved great scores. What advice would you give yourself back when you first started? (Maybe misconceptions you had, things you wish you would have done differently, etc.)

[pizza1]

Well, my rebuild was fast and furious to say the least. It worked for me, but would not work for most. Thats why the advice I give here on the forums to someone rebuilding, is different (the right way), vs what I did.

Would I go back and change the way I did things? Maybe...a little. I racked up tons and tons of INQ and New acts, and though it really hasn't stopped me from getting new credit, there comes a time when your scores basically halt and don't move due to that.

Thats where I am now. The only thing to change that is time (gardening). My reports need to age for a minimum of 1 yr, preferably 2. Im 3 months into gardening now.

[DIYcredit]

Well,when I was in $16,000 of cc debt I wish I would have actually started paying it off earlier instead of pushing it off and not worrying about it until the ship d**n near sunk.Paying the minimum amount due and extremely high interest rates is not a way to live and I hope someone who reads this will learn from my mistakes.Now that everything has been paid up for years, I no cc interest, live within my means and the last of my negatives will fall off of my cr's in a few short months.I'm thankful for the credit education that I have received through this great forum and Myfico.Although I continue to still learn.Their is too much misinformation online.I enjoy helping others and steering them in the right direction.It's never too late to start fixing your cr and start rebuilding.And no matter what NEVER GIVE UP!

1/2015-MYfico TU credit score 630

3/2019-Myfico TU credit score 809

[Anonymous]

As my scores improved monthly I would app for new account. That’s not the optimal strategy. You really need to group your app’ing in 6 month to 1 year intervals. That way the inq age together. I learned to this too late. I also “reached” for some products before I was ready. For example if you see people getting approved with scored from 660-690. I would have waited until my scores reached 690 instead of app’ing as soon as I hit 660. Also stick to your plan and don’t cave just because you received a preapproval in the mail/online. It’s hard to resist someone offering you something when other people have turned you down.

[Anonymous]

+1 to all the posts above.    I wish i would have waited more before going after things when they said i could. 

The hardest part of credit is the patience to watch it grow over time.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.

[KJinNC]

I am only a couple of months into my build, but I've already taken some lessons from how I did things and mistakes that I made. Some may apply to you, some may not.

All three bureaus are 100% clean for me, no derogatories, no lates, no nothing.

TU and EX had literally nothing on them until this spring. EQ had a few old accounts from 2012. One shows closed, two show open, but in reality, all three were closed a long time ago. So, for me, EQ is a little different than the other two. However, in general, classic thin profile, starting basically from scratch.

Things I regret:

- Stupidly applied for car loans just to see what interest rate I'd be offered, as a stupid way of seeing where I stood.

- Stupidly applied for cards I obviously couldn't get because I didn't know that hard inquiries mattered so I figured why not.

- Somewhat stupidly got a credit card I didn't want out of frustration that I didn't qualify for a Discover secured and I was in a rush to get to three credit cards (and then I got the Discover a week later anyway).

- I won't beat myself up too much for this because I had no way of knowing, but I did a small deposit on my Citi secured card, and there's no way to increase it until the card graduates, so I'm stuck with a very low CL on that card.

- I won't use the word "stupid" about Capital One, but if I were to do it again, I am not sure I'd have gotten a Capital One secured card, since I now know they can't graduate to unsecured.

Things I do not regret:

- Everyone says not to get too many accounts too rapidly, and that's generally good advice, but I ended up opening seven new accounts in two months, and I do not regret it. I might trim it a little or swap one or two accounts, but overall, *in my situation*, I think opening a lot of accounts in a short time makes sense, because I had no AAoA to screw up and AoYA was going to be basically the same either way. And none of my starter accounts are going to suffer adverse actions since they are mostly secured or paid in some way.

- Discover secured, Citi secured, Amazon Store Card are all cards/accounts I'm very happy I got.

- Thanks to my Self Lender $500 secured installment loan, FICO says I have a "good credit mix." Would definitely do that again.

Overall, if I could do it again, I'd trim one or two cards, all of the stupid early hopeless applications, and be in pretty much the same situation but with fewer hard inquiries.

But, every journey is different. Just read what people post and think what does or does not apply to you. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your insight. I feel the same about what I've been doing thus far. While it's not something that I think would work for most people, I've been racking up a bunch of accounts in a short span of time and have seen my scores climb because of it. I've kept inqueries to a minimum and have had some luck using the SCT (although I see all over that it's dead, i have cards that i cant find hard inq for after checking each of the bureaus). I'm a little concerned about the halting in score increases that you are currently faced with, if you're comfortable disclosing a ballpark number of inqueries of when that started to become an issue i'd really appreciate it

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the words of incouragement and advice, and wow to your current TransUnion score! Success story for sure, you're an inspiration and I hope that someday my score gets up that high too (:

[Anonymous]

This was some fantastic advice. It is indeed hard to resist when you start being able to get approved for stuff when you've been turned down so much in the past..that's where I feel I am right now.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to write such a thoughtful and informative response.

Capital One Secured can't graduate????! I have one of those and this is total news for me, oh no

It was really nice having someone elses input who is also pretty new into the rebuild and is also for the majority starting from scratch.