On the road from a 460

[Anonymous]

I had a 600 and 7 of my 7 student loans became 90 days deliquent. That dropped my score to a 460.
I immediately got a discover secured for 200 a citi secured for 200 and a Wells Fargo secured for 300.
I keep them all below 10% and pay before the due date. My score has gone up to 480 in a month.
The 7 past due loans are now in good standing its just the 1 time 90 day late still hurting me.

This is going to be a longgggg road to recovery.
1 auto loan for 29k in good standing and 3 secured cards all under 10% utilization. 2 collections accounts 1 of those I paid this month so 1 in collections.


What else can I do to improve my score

[Anonymous]

Welcome to myFICO!

You have some secured cards, which is good. 

All I can say now is that since everything is current, start a GW campaign to have the lates removed.

Here are some posts about good willing (GW):

• https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/goodwill-letters.php
• https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/GW-letter-Q-amp-A-Examples-and-GW-Success-St...
• https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/The-Saturation-Technique-Best-GW-adjustment-...

[beutiful5678]

If these are private student loans then trying to get them removed via goodwill letters is a good plan. If they are federal student loans, trying to get lates removed via goodwill letters will be futile as the reporting of lates is required as a matter of law (Higher Education Act).

[beutiful5678]

On the bright side, the collection accounts are probably having the biggest impact on your score. Hopefully you're able to get PFDs on them. If not, paying them will stop them from updating every month which will allow your score to recover over time.

Here's a graph that another member created showing the effect of lates as they age. It looks like your scores will recover ~20 points about six months after the lates. According to the graph though the presence of any 90-day lates has a big impact on your score for the entire duration of their time on your report.

Effect of lates over time

I would encourage you in the future, if you run into any financial hardships to contact your servicer ASAP to see if they can help you (by getting you into forbearance or changing to you to an IDR payment plan with a low payment, etc). I made the same stupid mistakes and now I'm paying for it with multiple 90-day lates (and some 120-day lates on my Perkins loan ). My loans are currently on a $0/month "payment" plan and the process to get it was not too onerous.

[Anonymous]

The loans are all federal loans, at least 4 years old. I just forgot that they weren’t on forebarence. They went 90 days from April-July31st. I called for a new forebarence on August 1st.

They will not offer me a retroactive forebarence. I’ve called and spoken to at least 12 different people. No buding on that end.

I will be joining a income repayment plan but that won’t be until after I file taxes for 2018. 2017 I did not file and 2016 I’m not sure. I went through the whole IDR on the fed website and they couldn’t get info from the irs.
I’ll file taxes this year and claim I made 15-18k and hop on a income repayment.

That’s not my concern. The loans will update to current soon enough.

Will I have to wait 7 years for my credit to go back up? Surely there’s something I can do to make it go back up to a 600 in a year from a 480.

Maybe get 5-7 secured cards use all under 10% and pay on time?

A 460 makes that bridge down the road look pretty beautiful. Especially when I am on the verge of being homeless because of my credit score.

My current lease is ending and I’ve been denied twice to a new apartment complex because of my **bleep**ty credit.

There has to be something I can do.
Outside of fed loans they don’t care about humans they just want their money back, screw them they can wait

[xaximus]

Usually the lates take some time to weaken as far as their impact. As far as your leasing situation goes - many will forego the requirement if you pay the full deposit. I recently had a coworker of mine who was moving and had identity fraud, so his score's were in the crapper. He let the place he was moving to know what's going on and they just asked for a full deposit. He also had proof of income as well so they weren't too worried.

[beutiful5678]

It looks like you currently have three cards reporting. Just get some good payment history showing and let those accounts age. I don’t think getting more cards is necessary right now.