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Hi All,
I posted recently under Business Credit, the credit building adventure that I have recently embarked upon for my business. I am also taking more direct control of my personal credit rebuild after major devastation to my finances during the great recession, which mired me in massive debt and ruined credit for years.
I've learned a lot in a short time from this forum, and wish I had discovered it much sooner than I did. But here I am, thankful to have found it now so I can accelerate my rebuild.
One of my primary reasons for posting this is that if my rebuild is successful, just about anybody should be able to rebuild with the right mix of patience, work, sacrifice, diligence, belief, observation, etc. I was hundreds of thousands of dollars insolvent at the worst point, was sued by somewhere around 15 creditors over the course of 3 or 4 years, had tax liens, chose not to declare bankruptcy, managed to keep my house, and over time have now shed most of that carnage from my credit reports. There are still a very small number of aged 30 and 60 day late mortgage payments lingering in the reports, as well as a six figure charge off that is due to drop off in about 4 or 5 months. My scores today with the three bureaus are all just a few points either side of 600. Until I proactively began managing my rebuild a couple of weeks ago, the only open credit account I had was my mortgage.
I have opened a Fingerhut account and purchased the least expensive item in their entire catalog to initiate use of the account, and will pay that off as soon as the first statement is issued.
I have opened a secured OpenSky Visa account with a $200 limit, and a secured Capital One MasterCard with a $200 limit, which I am contemplating increasing to $1,000 with an additional deposit. I intend to use these only for small total amounts to establish use and then practice AZEO.
My most important credit-dependent goal is to refinance my mortgage in about 18-24 months, into more favorable terms, and to cash out a small percentage of the large amount of equity that has grown over the last several years, to take care of some non-reporting debt that I still owe and to have a modest cushion of cash on hand to buffer sometimes inconsistent self-employment income.
In the course of building credit for my business from scratch, I intend to do so only without any PG accounts, so my business and personal credit do not cross become intertwined.
I welcome suggestions, experiences you've encountered and learned from in similar circumstances to mine, and hope that my experiences as I tackle this with purpose will help others do it at least as efficiently, and hopefully more efficiently, than me.
This morning I found a soft pull pre-qualification link for a Petal Visa unsecured card with no annual fee, filled out the pre-qualification form, was pre-qualified, converted it to an actual application, and within about 15 minutes received notification that I was approved with a $4,500 credit limit. This is the first completely unsecured major credit card that I have been able to obtain in more than 12 years, following the devastation to my personal finances from the Great Recession. It's a happy milestone, and a valuable tool.
@Puppetmaster wrote:This morning I found a soft pull pre-qualification link for a Petal Visa unsecured card with no annual fee, filled out the pre-qualification form, was pre-qualified, converted it to an actual application, and within about 15 minutes received notification that I was approved with a $4,500 credit limit. This is the first completely unsecured major credit card that I have been able to obtain in more than 12 years, following the devastation to my personal finances from the Great Recession. It's a happy milestone, and a valuable tool.
Congrats on your approval!
@Anonymous wrote:
...look at Discover....
Thanks for the advice. Ironically, when many of my creditors sued me during and following the meltdown, I won a judgment against Discover, representing myself. The result of the judgment was that my outstanding balance was wiped out and one of their collection agencies had to send thousands of dollars back to me. They played very dirty, and I won.
@Puppetmaster wrote:...I've learned a lot in a short time from this forum, and wish I had discovered it much sooner than I did. But here I am, thankful to have found it now so I can accelerate my rebuild...
Among the many things I learned here involved things to do and not do in order to get a Chase card. With that in mind, I opened only 4 non-Chase revolving accounts and waited until my credit score climbed above 700 before applying for a Chase card. I also waited until I had a pre-screened offer from Chase. Today I applied and was approved with a $13,500 limit for a Chase Freedom Unlimited Visa. Thank you to those whose advice and information put me on the right track with Chase.
Wow! Congrats on your approval and determination to get back on track. Keep it up. Its working. Happy Holidays for sure now!