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Slow rebuild

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Anonymous
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Slow rebuild

Looking for some advice on a couple topics. I have been in the process of rebuilding my credit since about 2018. I have 3 bad accounts. 

In 2015 I got divorced. I couldn't afford. My house anymore and it was foreclosed with Wells Fargo. I stopped making payments in 4/2015 and it official foreclosed and was sold 3/2017. 

After I let my house go I went through a severe depression period knew nothing about credit and literally only had enough money to buy food for me and my kids, pay for their daycare and gas for work. I floated house hold bills used my credit card as much as I could and paid my car payment on occasions. 

My Bank of America credit card was

closed and charged off in 12/2016. On 3/2019 I called and paid it full. It's now listed paid off charge off. But now it has 90 day late fees from 12/2016 until 3/2019 when it wasn't reporting any before. My question since I paid the charge off is the fall off date still the date it was closed or now the date I paid it? 

Last bad account is my car loan with Nissa Motor. Again I went through periods where it was 90 days late. Last late payment was 90 days late was January 2017. 

Initially I thought I just shouldn't use any credit and let time pass. But I couldn't even rent a place because all accounts were negative. I started with a secured credit card from USAA. CLI 1500 in 4/2018. Then I got a Capital 1 Secured Card 7/2018. I waited a year and realized Capital 1 or USAA would graduate them to an unsecured card. 9/2019 I paid off my car loan and took out a personal loan. Places I was applying for to rent said that I needed doubt the amount of positive accounts for my negative accounts. A higher deposit didn't matter. Also I had 3 items in collections. One was from the department of treasury it was a advance from the army when I got out. They never received the paperwork from my travel and charged me for the advance. I paid that and they deleted the collection. Then one was a cable bill. I wrote to the company directly asking for them the verify the debt and it was deleted. The last is a medical collection. Just last month I contacted the medical company directly they sent the bills to the wrong address and agreed to pull the account from the collection agency and I paid them directly.

 

So now I still have the 3 bars on my CR but I also have the following goods:

USAA $1500 

Captial one secured $500

Capital 1 Quicksilver $750

Avant personal loan 

One Main Financial personal loan 

 

I honestly regret the Avant personal loan. My utilization across the cards are pretty high I thought it was better to show constant use of them and just learned no more than 30%. So now they are in my sock drawer and I plan on having 2 paid off by 10/1 if not sooner and the last by December. I honestly want to close the USAA one because the interest rate is the highest it as annual fees and provides no benefit as it will never graduate. And then next the Capital 1 secured because it will also never graduate. My goal is by March 2021 to have the scant loan paid off. Looking for some advice on how to increase my credit score or will I never really have over a 650 because of the foreclose, charge off and numerous of pay payments. 

11/2017 EX 526 TU 544 EQ 526

11/2018 EX 570 TU 599 EQ 579

11/2019 EX 606 TU 629 EQ 614

7/2020 EX 653 TU 664 EQ 642

 

4 REPLIES 4
FireMedic1
Community Leader
Mega Contributor

Re: Slow rebuild


@Anonymous wrote:

Looking for some advice on a couple topics. I have been in the process of rebuilding my credit since about 2018. I have 3 bad accounts. 

In 2015 I got divorced. I couldn't afford. My house anymore and it was foreclosed with Wells Fargo. I stopped making payments in 4/2015 and it official foreclosed and was sold 3/2017. 

After I let my house go I went through a severe depression period knew nothing about credit and literally only had enough money to buy food for me and my kids, pay for their daycare and gas for work. I floated house hold bills used my credit card as much as I could and paid my car payment on occasions. 

My Bank of America credit card was

closed and charged off in 12/2016. On 3/2019 I called and paid it full. It's now listed paid off charge off. But now it has 90 day late fees from 12/2016 until 3/2019 when it wasn't reporting any before. My question since I paid the charge off is the fall off date still the date it was closed or now the date I paid it? Its the date of the DoFD. Nothing can cahnge that date. So actually it will fall off on the first late date that led to the CO status.

Last bad account is my car loan with Nissa Motor. Again I went through periods where it was 90 days late. Last late payment was 90 days late was January 2017. Car companies are brutal. It will stay till 7trs after the date it was listed as.

Initially I thought I just shouldn't use any credit and let time pass. But I couldn't even rent a place because all accounts were negative. I started with a secured credit card from USAA. CLI 1500 in 4/2018. Then I got a Capital 1 Secured Card 7/2018. I waited a year and realized Capital 1 or USAA would graduate them to an unsecured card. 9/2019 I paid off my car loan and took out a personal loan. Places I was applying for to rent said that I needed doubt the amount of positive accounts for my negative accounts. A higher deposit didn't matter. Also I had 3 items in collections. One was from the department of treasury it was a advance from the army when I got out. They never received the paperwork from my travel and charged me for the advance. I paid that and they deleted the collection. Then one was a cable bill. I wrote to the company directly asking for them the verify the debt and it was deleted. The last is a medical collection. Just last month I contacted the medical company directly they sent the bills to the wrong address and agreed to pull the account from the collection agency and I paid them directly.

 

So now I still have the 3 bars on my CR but I also have the following goods:

USAA $1500 

Captial one secured $500

Capital 1 Quicksilver $750

Avant personal loan 

One Main Financial personal loan 

 

I honestly regret the Avant personal loan. My utilization across the cards are pretty high I thought it was better to show constant use of them and just learned no more than 30%. So now they are in my sock drawer and I plan on having 2 paid off by 10/1 if not sooner and the last by December. I honestly want to close the USAA one because the interest rate is the highest it as annual fees and provides no benefit as it will never graduate. And then next the Capital 1 secured because it will also never graduate. My goal is by March 2021 to have the scant loan paid off. Looking for some advice on how to increase my credit score or will I never really have over a 650 because of the foreclose, charge off and numerous of pay payments. 

11/2017 EX 526 TU 544 EQ 526

11/2018 EX 570 TU 599 EQ 579

11/2019 EX 606 TU 629 EQ 614

7/2020 EX 653 TU 664 EQ 642

 


First. The talk on the internet blog sites about dont go over using your cards by 30% is garbage. You can use the accounts all you want. But if you cant pay it, dont charge it. Its whats reported that counts. It appears you have balances on all the cards. get them all paid down and let 1 report each month at less than 8%. More loans dont do any good either. 1 loan is all thats needed for FICO scoring. So if you can pay off the highest interest loan. Do so. It come down to you have have a high util of your total credit lines. Need to get them down. Then score bumps will happen. Pay off one of the loans. And go from there. Remember. You dont want to pay interest. Your making the baks richer and you poorer. Good Luck!


Message 2 of 5
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Slow rebuild

Here is a way to help yourself. 

No more loans

keep one for now get the other paid off ASAP. Your balance on your credit cards doesn't matter as much as what the balance is when your statement date is. 
figure out statement dates for all cards. Figure out how much cash flow( money left after everyone is paid and you've spent what you have to and want to each month). 
ex. Income $3000

total bills and expenses and play money $2500

leaves $500 cash flow. 
letss assume all your cards are maxed out. Determine rent and car note and cap one qs let's say it's $1000. Keep that in your bank account and pay off usaa and cap 1. Pay rent and car and cap 1 qs payment. That used up all $3000. Now everything is paid as far as rent credit cards and car for the month and you have no money left right?  Use the usaa to pay rest of monthly bills. Using our example numbers you should be using about $1000 back onto the usaa leaving the $500 cash flow as paid off. Next month you will have your $2500 in bills - cap 1 payment paid off. So let's say $2450 and now $550 cash flow. 
do the exact same. Pay off usaa pay rest of bills now your usaa should carry a balance of $500. One more month same thing now usaa is paid off. 
after month 3 you have $2500 bills - cap 1 payment - usaa payment since they are now at 0. Now pay off your cap 1 qs your cash bills and pay everything else with your usaa. Month 4 cycle everything again through usaa. Based on $750 paid on qs. Should take you month 4 and 5 to pay off all balances. 

from here on out work on getting your cap one qs card limit raised. Keep paying your bills like before cash bills rest on credit card but this time use the qs card to pay as many as you can before you start using your bank to pay rest. As your limit rises cancel the usaa and get your $1500 back. Maybe a years time. Then the secured cap 1. 

Now be responsible. Leverage your new credit to work for you. It's ok to use your cards just pay off by statement date. Then if an emergency does come you have cash or credit to get you through the storm.  

Message 3 of 5
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Slow rebuild

I used part of my savings and put $1000 towards my USAA. Should I try to refinance the two loans together? I was given that option a while ago but I wasn't sure. I am looking to try and buy a house around 2/2021 so I dont want to do too much. Right now this is what I have:

 

Cap 1 Secured $176/$300

Cap 1 QS $357/750

USAA $258/1500

 

I hope with paying a large chunk of the USAAon 7/29 it will post prior to the statement cut and I will see a score bump. Also I should have a collection come off as it was disputed. I wrote down all the statement cut dates USAA cuts on the 2nd of the month. @Anonymous I am going to use your idea to knock the remaining balances down. 

Message 4 of 5
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Slow rebuild

***update****

I found my statement cut dates and I am basing my cc payments on that. I brought my USAA account down $1000  so far only Experian has updated but I jumped 19 points. I read about the utilization thresholds so I'm trying to bring m cc to those to give me the biggest score jump as I am seeking a mortgage soon. Looking to be preapproved next month for a contruction build. That way I will have an additional 6 months to pay down balances. I also used the utilization threshold to bring down the cap 1 secured balance as the statement cuts in a few days. Excited to see how many points this will help. Currently I am subscribed to receive my credit report every 3 months but I am going to change it to monthly so I can continue to monitor my progress. Will update when cap1 is updated. 

Message 5 of 5
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