Hello everyone, I just wanted to give a big big thank you to everyone in my first post. I have been a long time lurker on this forum and figured it was time to give back and post my credit journey! When I was in college I had a significant other that I co-signed a car for (horrible choice) and had opened up a few cards in my name and maxed them out and left me straddled with unknown debt, late payment and collections. My three scores were in the upper 400s and I had no end in sight prior to finding this forum. I had $4500 in collections between charge offs and medical bills, utility bills (put in my name by her) and all sorts of odds and ends. I did not see a way to improve my score. After college I actually became a credit analyst for a bank and later a F500 company for commercial lending and I got tired of explaining away my low credit scores and the stress that came before every background check, and quite frankly was embarrassed. A year and a half ago I figured I would start to make the slow climb up the credit ladder. I had a cap one platinum card with a $300 limit and a qs1 with a 500 limit from before all this went wrong, which provided an okay base along with 2 private student loan and 1 federal. The 2 private had 5 years of on time payments which provided a little bit of a buffer for me. Now I started tackling my credit card debt and collections. My collections were as follows:
lNVN funding from a charged off credit card-857
Cavalry portfolio services -1879
and a couple other odds and ends collections for medical bills.
Once I paid lnvn funding and cavalry they automatically did a PFD without me even asking and had it removed from my credit including the original charged off trade line. (New policy)
after I got my collections taken care of I had a pre qualify from chase bank and a credit union. I got approved the following cards:
Ashley card $1000 sl 8 months ago auto bump to $2500 this month
care credit $850 sl auto bump to $1850 this month
chase freedom unlimited 3 months ago $500 sl - auto cli to $1000 this month
chase freedom 2 months ago - $1500 SL
CEFCU credit union - $500 sl 5 months ago
AMEX delta gold this month - $2000 SL
AMEX everyday card - $1000 SL this month
Product changed my cap 1 platinum to a QS this month.
now I am headed to the garden after a couple of denials with scores of experian 679 equifax 630 TransUnion 685. I am going to garden these cards for two years since I am looking at a mortgage in a year and a half.
just wanted to share my story and give you all a big thanks and get introduced to the board! I am going to be posting much more. Thank you all!
