@Jokkun1 wrote:Hi,
I'm working on repairing my credit, but I'm completely new to it. I had a few questions if anyone is able to offer answers. I'll provide a quick look at what I'm dealing with: https://imgur.com/a/raWMjyN
I've listed everything in order of age, with the older accounts (and nearing the 7 year fall off) at the bottom, and the newer accounts near the top. Everything highlighted in green is in good standing. Everything highlighted in orange is a C/O with either in-house collections or at risk of being sold to a debt collection agency, but hasn't yet. The red one isn't mine and I'm currently in the process of getting it removed. I've successfully gotten it removed from TU, just waiting on EQ and EXP.
To my questions:
1.) The Merrick Bank credit card has my highest card balance of $809. It's still reflecting as in-house, but I've been contacted by Carson Smithfield regarding it. I'm assuming they're just handling the in-house collections for it. They're offering me a settlement of $80 via their website to settle it. Would this be advisable to take? It is my highest negative balance on a card and won't fall off for another 4 years, so I'm tempted to take it for the utilization drop.
2.) The Bridgecrest account is by far my largest collection (and a repo), but will fall off early next year along with the Discover Card account. I don't plan on touching either of those and just letting them fall off. My plan is to target the other card balances and pay them off entirely (excluding the aforementioned Discover one), especially since they're some of the newer accounts and it'll lower my utilization. After that, I plan to target the rest of the newer accounts and work backward. Does this sound like a solid plan?
3.) I was also recently approved for a new card with CapitalOne that I plan on just using for a small purchase a month and paying it back in full each month in order to help build my payment history. I was also looking at services like Kikoff or Creditstrong, but I'm cautious as I don't want to open a ton of new accounts all at once just to build my payment history. Any advice there?
your goal is to get to the point where either all of your negatives reflect a $0 balance and are no longer actively reporting every month or all of your negatives are removed.
Figure out which of those two options you can accomplish first and work towards that goal.
I imagine it will be some combination of settling all of the smaller stuff in full while waiting for that big repo to fall off.
Only settle stuff in full. No payments. One payment to settle each individual debt in full. Go through them one at a time, until they're all settled or they fall off your report.
I would confirm you're not within the SOL for any of your current debts and priortize settling those in full first.
how much money do you have now to put towards everything?
I would try to add good credit cards that you can keep well past when your credit problems have all fallen off of your report.
I wouldn't apply for 'kikoff' style credit builders.
I'm thinking secured cards that graduate: NFCU, US Bank, USAA,
0/6, 2/12, 7/24