I am approaching my 1 year anniversary and have not yet graduated. I wanted to share my rebuild status/data points to see if anyone can point out something obvious I've missed that I should be doing, or if it just a matter of continuing to wait. Thank you! I will continue to update this post until I graduate or give up.
Filed Bankruptcy Ch7 - 7/2018
Discharged 10/2018
Opened Discover IT with $500 12/2018
Note: I did not find these forums until around 8/2019, so my util and inquiries were at times higher than they would have been because I was figuring things out on my own.
Statement Date: 1/2019, Balance $0, Limit $500, Amount Used $418.90, Discover TU 586
Statement Date: 2/2019, Balance $300.55, Limit $500, Amount Used $1044.78, Discover TU 622
Statement Date: 3/2019, Balance $472.82, Limit $1000, Amount Used $1002.54, Discover TU 581
Statement Date: 4/2019, Balance $726.41, Limit $1000, Amount Used $1262.20, Discover TU 599
Statement Date: 5/2019, Balance $152.63, Limit $1500, Amount Used $1264.04, Discover TU 613
Statement Date: 6/2019, Balance $189.22, Limit $1500, Amount Used $1525.49, Discover TU 629
Statement Date: 7/2019, Balance $419.97, Limit $2000, Amount Used $1691.25, Discover TU 644
Statement Date: 8/2019, Balance $617.74, Limit $2000, Amount Used $1757.01, Discover TU 655 *
Statement Date: 9/2019, Balance $279.66, Limit $2000, Amount Used $2384.59, Discover TU 658
Statement Date: 10/2019, Balance $95.84, Limit $2000, Amount Used $2570.97, Discover TU 676
Statement Date: 11/2019, Balance $0, Limit $2000, Amount Used $1207.72, Discover TU 673
*I see a soft pull on my annual TU report 7/29/19, so clearly I failed initial graduation
I have never been late. I have never gone over the limit. I pay whatever my balance is every 2 weeks when I get paid. I use the card for all daily expenses. Once I found these forums and realized how important util was I made a conscious effort to get the balance as low as possible prior to my statement date (4th).
I burned a lot of folks in my bankruptcy, but currently have the following accounts besides the Discover card all current, never late, never over:
Capital One Secured - $49 dep/$200 limit
Merrick Bank - $1100 (set to double next month)
Target - $2000
Ollo - Initial $2000, recent CLI to $2200
DSRM/Valero Gas - Initial $300, recent CLI to $500
Credit One - $1000 set to cancel when Merrick doubles up to dodge the annual fee
I am an auth user on my husbands accounts to help with Age:
Capital One - 10k limit, 25 years old
Citibank - 5k limit, 3 years old
I have significant student loan debt:
Federal - ~175k, but I qualify and am on track for public service loan forgiveness. I have never missed a payment, but obviously it hurts my debt to income since creditors can't see that I only pay 489/mo and it will disappear in a little over 8 years
Private - Initially 55k, now 36k, paying this off aggressively ahead of schedule. Never missed a payment, never late.
My plan is to give the Discover until June of next year. I am planning to buy a car end of next year (Cap one prequal currently has me at 3-4% APR which if accurate is very awesome), and I will want the security deposit as part of my down payment. In the meantime I will add $500 more to the security deposit next paycheck because I am using it all the time and the rewards are the best out of all of my cards. If it does not graduate by June, my TU inquiries will be back at 1 and I'm going to see if I can prequal through their site for an unsecured card. I've seen other threads where folks never graduated but were able to get a new card. Not ideal from an age perspective, but what can I do?
3 Bureau Experian on 11/6/2019: EQ is 713 / EXP is 708 / TU is 679. I'm currently at 1% overall util. My annual income is ~100k.
My TU score is lagging the other two bureaus. The most recent late payments for EQ and EXP are 1 yr 4 months, but for TU is 1 year.
Any advice/thoughts are greatly appreciated. If there are additional data that could be helpful, please ask and I will track it down. Reading through everything here has been a big help. Thanks 
Hello and welcome to the forums,
Holding on to the discover secured card and waiting for it to graduate was very frustrating. I actually got to the point where I gave up on it but I knew it would eventually happen and since it was the oldest card in my rebuild, I wasn't about to close it.
It took 33 months for my card to eventually graduate. Like you, I found the forums late so carried a balance @ near 100 %. I eventually started to PIF each month as my scores recovered and once I made it to around 670 and maintained that score for about 3 months, it graduated. Ymmv, but understand in the end it'll be worth holding on to.. I used to get mad, call them and complain... but I eventually realized discover didnt put me in my position, I put myself there. I would just have to wait it out.
It's a good company and worth sticking it out. Just understand that it may take some time. Don't expect anything anytime soon. Take care of the account and your others and when it happens it happens.
Good luck!
Last Inquiry 12/23/2022 Ally Bank Mortgage
Once you got the secured card from Disco. How many more accounts did you get afterwards? Miss Disco is a jealous one. They SP like crazy to see if your cheating on her. No matter how long it takes. Its worth it in the end. Plus the thank you CLI after graduation. And then in a year you can qualify for a second card like the real deal iT card.
That would explain it.
All of my other cards were after my Disco (12/2018):
Ollo 4/2019
Merrick 5/2019
Credit One 6/2019
Target 8/2019
Capital One 8/2019
I did not realize I could do a proper rebuild with fewer cards until after I found these forums. I figured this might be the issue. I'm hoping that by June Miss Disco gets over it or lets me prequal unsecured. Thanks very much for the feedback! I really feel like in terms of managing what I have I'm doing things right, 2 out of 3 over 700 13 months post discharge ain't bad. I realize it's going to take time. The issue is freeing up the deposit money and having it back in my hand by Dec 2020, so I'm willing to be patient, but I also need to keep my deadline in mind.
Its not a science but there has been reports she'll hold out until you become faithful. If your following AZEO. Only let missy report a small balance and then PIF before the due date. But you've done rather well on your rebuild. Congrats. We all want it yesterday. Patience is our best friend. Before you know it. It will happen. Good Luck!
I am actually not following AZEO at present. I just keep all of my cards below 10%, usually 5% or 0. I have subscriptions on all of them so that the card issuers see responsible use.
Ollo - Pays my EZPass, usually statement cuts with $30 balance / $2200 limit
Merrick - Pays a 15.98/mo subscription, so statement cuts with $15.98 balance / $1100 limit
Capital One - Pays 11/mo subscription, but only $200 limit, so statement cuts with $5 / $200 limit
Valero Card - I get gas on this and PIF, at most the statement cuts with < $30 / $500 limit
Target Card - I use this to shop at Target (5% discount), I PIF each pay check and make sure that on statement cuts it has < $180 / $2000
Would I be better off putting everything onto the Discover card?
I am still trying to better understand AZEO vs. just keeping by card and overall util low (my attempts to search this as a topic have not yielded an informative result). In general, excluding my husband's cards that I'm auth user on, I tend to be at about 3-6% total util and never over 9% on any one card. As you can see in the OP, with Discover I was higher a few times, especially in the beginning, but my more recent activity follows this trend. Will AZEO make that big of a difference? Thanks for your help.
@ FireMedic
I didn't realize the little missy was so jealous! I *too* have cheated on her since I had to replace the tradelines that were closed by Cap1.
What does she define as being "faithful" after you have already cheated on her? Do we have to go to couples counseling or something? How long before I can look at another card again with lust in my heart?!
(a bit tongue in cheek but serious question since I really want to make her happy in the long run.... )
Took 23 months, had stopped using it for a few months and was carrying a 50% utilization. My increase was $250 and I haven't prequaled for a new card yet and it's been a while.
