(Re-)Building Credit - Getting Started

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone! I'm new to the forum as well as to the world of credit in general. I'm just getting started on (re-)building my credit and am looking forward to getting inundated with all your knowledge!

A little bit about me: I think my credit score currently hovers around 650 but I haven't checked it at all recently. I have a number of credit lines open (6 in total, I believe) as well as some college debt (<7K), which I have been incrementally paying off since a year ago. I recently started a new job and have been aggressively paying down as much of the CC debt as I can. In fact, I just got auto-CLIs on 3 of my lines, which I think was due to the aggressive paying off of old balances. My utilization currently hovers around 50%, and I'm planning/hoping to get that down to 30% by the end of next month if not this one.

My aim for now is to break 700. I do not plan to purchase a car or a house anytime soon, just trying to pay all of my debt down ASAP.

I know that I get free credit reports (but not credit scores) from each of the 3 CRAs once a year. I haven't asked for this year's yet, because I'm thinking about signing up for USAA's CMS (I've heard from around here that it's best since you get all 3 CRs daily - please correct me if I'm wrong). I guess I was thinking that I would first try to improve my credit score as much as I can before I ask for my "official" credit reports on my hopefully new-and-improved credit-worthiness. Or is that stupid, and I should just get all 3 reports now?

I'll be back with more questions later. Thanks in advance!

[Repo-ed]

Any negative TLs?  Any CO?

USAA CMS is fantastic and I use it in conjunction with TU (score/report) quartlery monitoring from here as well as scorewatch for EQ score from here as well.

You sound like you've got a solid grasp on things and should fair pretty well.

[Anonymous]

Hey Repo-ed, I haven't pulled a credit report yet to look at, but as far as any big negatives go, there should be none except for this one time that I missed a payment due date by 1 day. I immediately paid off what was due as well as the $25 fine. That was with the Amazon.com store card through GECRB. So likely there's a ding from that, but I'm considering asking for a goodwill adjustment because otherwise, my payment history across all of my credit lines has always been on-time, and I've also paid down the entire balance on this line (plus they even gave me an auto-CLI of 1K recently).

I have opened and closed some store credit lines in the past. (I was young and stupid and opened the lines when the cashiers pestered me to - really, they should legally be made to explain all the ramifications of opening a credit line to customers who are <18 years of age.) Don't know if that counts as a significant negative.

Question: Are the credit reports that USAA CMS provides essentially the same thing as what you would get from AnnualCreditReport.com? Also, does it matter which of the 3 CRAs I pull a credit report from, on AnnualCreditReport.com? Is there any particular CRA that is "recommended" over the other? I figure I'll stagger the credit reports that I get through AnnualCreditReport.com by 4 months; I'm just trying to figure out which one I should pull first, to start tackling my project to rebuild credit.

Thanks!