Well,
When I was checking out my Walmart Credit Card information on their website, they had an offer to see my Score for free, so I thought "What the heck?" Plus, I was curious, because I knew I had a bunch of new collections that had showed and I wanted to "get it over with" and see just how horrible my score was. Considering I had figured out that I had almost 5 collections and an extremely high debt-to-credit ratio(63%), I was expecting the type of score you would see after a bankruptcy, something in the 400's. To my surprise, as of today, 10-30-11, I stand at 597 through TransUnion's MyFico simulator. Even though that score stinks in the eyes of lenders, I am pleasantly surprised.
When I went to the part of my score when it shows the "scale" and what your negative and positives are, the ONLY positive I had was my credit history. I'm only 27, so my history(my first ever revolving credit account) is 7 and a half years. My biggest factors on the negative side were collections and a bunch of maxed out credit cards. My goal is to shred the ones I have on hand and just save one for emergencies.
I realize improving your credit, even when you make on-time payments for years on end, is a slow and pain staking process, but as long as God keeps providing me with my steady income, I don't see why I couldn't get into the mid to high 600's within a few years. I should make that my "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" plan. I also, decided to sign up for the $4.95/month quarterly monitoring plan, so that I can keep better track of my report.
Thanks for taking the time to read this :-)
