@Anonymous wrote:Hello, I've been lurking on your boards for quite some time before taking the plunge and signing up for an account.
I hit some rough patches in my mid to late twenties when I unexpectedly became a single mother of two, and unfortunately one of the consequences was a tank in my credit scores. I am now in my early thirties and expecting my third child (and obtaining a bonus step son). My fiance and I each rent an apartment (his is month to month, so easy to get out of), my lease is up in March. We are in the market for getting pre approved for a mortgage and also upgrading to a bigger vehicle.
Currently, my credit scores are not good, or even fair for that matter.
Equifax - 573
TransUnion - 569
Experian - 582
I have two secured credit cards (very new)
Capital One - $200 (opened in March/2017)
Discover - $300 (approved this week)
And two revolving lines of credit
Auto - $340/month - $10,000 left on loan (opened August/2014)
School Loan - $9,607 (I need to call and start getting the payments set up to knock this down)
I have two open collections on my credit that I am currently making partial payments on to eliminate.
- $119.76 left on one
- $94.36 left on the other
Plan to have these paid off by next month.
I have two late payments on my auto loan - one in July of 2015, and the other in December of 2016. I have already typed up "goodwill" requests and have stuffed them into 11 envelopes to be sent to 11 "higher ups" that I found on linkedin. Are there any other steps I could take about having these removed? All you can do is what you have done, if you dont succeed at first put them on a regular schedule for getting a letter.
Other then this, I don't have much more on my credit report. I would appreciate any advice regarding what else I could do to get my scores up.
Cheers,
Lydia
Welcome to the board 
You need one more revolving card to help boost your scores, you do not need a credit builder loan as you already have installment loans. Whats keeping your Fico down is the constant updating of those balances on the collections, they need to stop updating so the sooner they are paid off the better. If you dont have a PFD agreement with them you want to begin a GW letter campaign as soon as they update to paid status. Good luck in your rebuild
