your scores are not going to improve until you settle all charge offs and collections so that they are at a $0 balance
this will happen when they are removed 7 years after the DoFD of the debt or when you settle them in full and they report a $0 balance after you've completely paid the settlement
no amount of new credit is going to fix the fact that you owe people you already borrowed from money.
settle all of the charge offs and collections, get them all to a $0 balance and once that happens, new credit reporting positively can start to help
0/6, 2/12, 7/24
@Sewreadee wrote:Currently I am feeling as if all of my little drips at progress are being taken away in one day.
I'll start at the beginning:
I started trying to repair my credit in 2014, by 2016 I had done well enough to qualify for a Capital One Auto Loan and followed the steps here to get a Navy Federal Unsecured card for 13k limit.
After all that success I began to do the same things that landed me in the credit dumps. I realize now I was dealing with depression incorrectly and combined with losing both my job and then my housing I could afford, I allowed myself to slip back and now it seems as if I'm in a worse place than before. I was able to come back somewhat with work, but then found myself in a city I could not afford and still struggling. I was fired back in June of 2024 when I was seeing progress and scores in the 600s, but late payments on Self loan and Kikoff at that time dinged me, and Self closed as negative acct before I got my first paycheck with new job. I have since reopened a new Seld lender loan. I have moved again and my credit combined with collection accounts are preventing me from getting an apartment. I was able to hold onto my car with Capital One, but I've paid way more in interest than principal and had to do a settlement plan to get that bill out from under me. Now I am back trying to get my Fico into the low 600s and I can't seem to get past 540 to save my life. Details below:Income: 102k
Current FICO: 511/EQ 551/TU 568/EX - will drop to 520 soon.
Cap1 Auto Loan: 11k owed/ Settled for 2950 - 3 more payments of $288 to be complete
Self Lender: $150 per month
Open Sky: Approved but haven't funded for the 1k limit requested
Discover Secured: Approved but not funded - not sure what amount will help most?
Kikoff: $2500 "loan" with lates within last 120 daysSelf Lender loan: $2500/ never late
Collection Accounts:
NCA: $1645 - I will be honest and say I never want to pay them
Radius Global: $485 - Old Comcast account that I'd rather pay Comcast's direct and dispute accuracy to have them removed
Southwest Credit: $634 - old Spectrum account and again I plan on paying Spectrum direct to have this disputed and removed
Verizon: $940
LVNV: $856 - Credit One Burned
All collections are within past 4 years and Southwest, Verizon and Radius popped up this year.
Should I pay the 3 collections that came this year and open those secured cards for the best boost?
Also today was notified my Experian score dropped from 568 Fico to 520 because my boost payments were not on the card I registered.
I need a 640 Experian Vantage to get the apartment. Will the collection payments help and secured cards help with that?
I'm feeling defeated because I have to rent airbnbs, and the South Florida market is brutal if your credit is not up to par no matter how much you make.
I have also taken on another job to increase my income so I can tackle some of these debts faster, but even though it's remote, bouncing from Airbnbs every other week makes it hard to have a stable place to connect.
I know I did this to myself, but it really feels like this time NOTHING is working to get me back up and I don't recall it being this hard in 2016.
I appreciate all feedback, but please save the chastisement...I'm doing it enough to myself as is.
The first thing I'd recommend you do is stop applying for any new accounts, or loans. No amount of new accounts with positive payment history are going to negate the negative information in your reports, or improve your scores in any kind of meaningful way. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. By continuing to add accounts , you'll instead likely continue to see your scores drop due to additional inquiries and/or for the new accounts.
You should try to throw all the money you can at getting the collections and charge offs PIF before trying to add any new accounts. Forget the Discover and Open sky, your money is better served paying off debt right now.
Charged off revolving credit cards in particular with any amount owed on them are scored at 100% utilization until they are paid in full. The charged off status combined with the high reported utilization are score killers.
In the meantime, if you have any open revolving credit card accounts, secured , or otherwise your next focus should be to get them paid down to zero and keep them there with the exception of allowing only one of them to report a very small (less than 9% of the CL) balance every month. Once it reports, pay the balance in full by the due date, rinse and repeat.
The more time that passes between you and the adverse information in your reports, the better your scores will get. What you have in front of you is by no means impossible to overcome, you're just going to need to be dedicated to getting these negative accounts PIF, and stay focused on keeping your payment history clean, and reported utilization low moving forward.
