My Rebuild... Update

[Anonymous]

Hello all, 

I've been lurking on this site for the last few months and reading many of your threads, I just wanted to say thanks to you all that have shared your personal stories and journeys of your rebuilds. This will be my first attempt at trying to rebuild my credit. My goal is to qualify for a mortgage within the 18-24 months. My current situation is as follows:

I've pulled all three credit reports and they all basically say the same thing. I haven't gotten my true fico scores yet, but my VantageScore 3.0 from CK is as follows:

-TU: 619

-EQ: 599

-EX: 588 (ficoscore 8 off EXP website).

Collections are:

- PRA $450 (reduced to $292 after speaking with them, will pay that on 07/03/19)

- Allied Business Services $93 (old medical bill, will call and speak with them on 07/03/19, hoping for a PFD and pay it next week)

- Arbor Professional Solututions $712 (old credit union loan, saving to pay this in the fall / winter)

- Jefferson Capital System $555 (old fingerhut debt, saving to pay this in the fall / winter)

I'm currently enrolled in college and have about $35k in student loan debt, but all of those are on in-school deferment currently and showing no late payments. I also have a loan thru my credit union for $750 with $312 left on it, all the payments have been made on-time with that account.

My plan is too obtain secured cards thru Discover and my credit union and basically get my utilization on those cards around 8-9%, then pay them right off after they report. I also haven't decided if I should pay the credit union loan off or keep paying on it for 5 more months and use the money to work on the collections. 

Any advice would greatly be appreciated, thanks for your time.

[gdale6]

Welcome to the board

You have already been advised PRA/Jefferson will remove so its covered. You would want to attempt the PFD with the old CU loan and the medical here are the steps to move through with it

Medical collections are some of the easiest to get removed from your CRs, here are the steps that you should follow to address them:

1. Call the OC and see if insurance can be billed, (or-rebilled), collections ultimately paid by insurance get removed per new rules that came from CRAs settlement with 22 state AGs. If not then
2. see if you qualify for Charity Care, if not then
3.  ask that they recall the collection in exchange for full payment
4. Send the reporting CA a PFD offer
5. Google the HIPAA Process and contact its creator for help, this process cannot be discussed in any forum of myFico.

adding: I would pay off the CU loan you dont need it with the SLs reporting. You actually need 3 open revolvers to drive your FIco so I would be looking for that card, might try the Cap-1 prequal and see what comes up. You only want 1 card reporting a small balance each month, less than 9% of its CL until you reach a point where your Fico is high enough or you have sufficient numbers of cards that you dont have to worry about a few reporting balances.

[Jnbmom]

Welcome to the boards

Great start trying to  get yiur collections taken care of, hopefully you get some paid for deletes.  If not paid is much better than unpaid.

Yes it is best to start with secured cards, 2 is good 3 would be ideal. You can always get an open sky, there is no credit check for them, but they will not unsecure. It will however be a third card. If you can use the money to pay some collections, I would continue to pay your self loan. After that's paid off you will still have your student loans which will give you your installment loan for the equation.

I would however get your actual FICO scores, as CK uses vantage and that is not used by most lenders. Your scores can be vastly different between the 2.

[DIYcredit]

When you get your secured cc you only need one and make monthly on time payments.In 6-12 months see if you can graduate up to unsecured cc like cap one which reports to all three cb's.Make having three cc's a long term goal.Don't open cc's just to have them, acquire cc's that have a long tern value like rewards.Never close your oldest open unsecured cc. GOOD LUCK...

[Anonymous]

Well I got the ball rolling today on the rebuild. Got approved for the Discover IT ($200) and the Cap 1 ($99 for $200 CL) secured cards. Deposits should go thru early next week hopefully. I'll be paying off the PRA balance on Monday thru their website and I sent a PFD letter for the $93 medical bill. Offered them $50, hopefully I'll hear back next week sometime.

Baby steps for now, but at least we can start getting some positive reporting going here shortly. =)

[Anonymous]

Couple updates in the last week and a half. I signed up for myFico monthly plan and noticed a huge difference in scores compared to my Fako scores as you can see in my sig. I paid off the credit union loan $318, paid off the settled amount with PRA $292.34 for the PFD. It has been stuck in "Processing Final Payment" since 07/08/19, so that is driving me crazy as I'm going to have to learn some patients with this rebuild!!

I spoke with Allied Business Services about the $93 medical bill, they won't do a PFD, so that will be paid in full next week. I also recieved both my Discover IT and Cap 1 secured cards this week. I charged $10 on the Discover card and havent used the Cap1 yet. Hoping to get a small score bump with the new cards reporting and the paid off credit union loan. It'll be awhile on the PRA bump. That's it for now.

[Jannelo]

Congrats!   Just a little FYI.  Cap One takes almost two months to start reporting.  So don't be concerned when you keep checking your credit reports and no Cap One.

[FireMedic1]

Congrats! Let the recovery begin. Your doing it right. Keep at it and in time the score will go up and Miss Disco will graduate. Good Job!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info and support, I appreciate it. I have a question for everyone... Does making multiple payments on your CC a month look better scoring-wise or doesn't it matter? Example: charge $40 on a $200 card, pay off $30 before the statement closing date so it shows 5% utilization and then pay the rest off right after it reports to the CRA. Thanks.

[FireMedic1]

Doesn't matter. Long as you pay on time and don't be late.