@Brandnew23 wrote:Hello, I'm hoping I can get some advice on rebuilding my credit. I have a few loans out with Affirm, I have used Affirm quite a few times, always paid on time, never missed a payment, but this time I got in over my head and ended up being late making payments on 2 of the accounts. I believe they were 60 days late, I paid them in full and 2 weeks later, I received notification that I had 2 delinquency reported on my Experian credit report from Affirm. I am 47 years old, the highest my score has never been is 640. At the time of my typing this, my Transunion score shows as 570 (the drop hasn't reflected yet) my Experian report says my score WAS 651 but as of today my score dropped 70 points because of the delinquency, and my score is now showing as 581. I am literally starting from where I was in my 20's. My payment history is excellent, my credit history excellent, my utilization is at 100 percent and I'm guessing that is what was hurting me. I was going to get a second job to pay off my credit cards to improve the utilization, but I know that a delinquency does not look good at all on a credit report , with an already low score. Please tell me what yo do besides wait the 7 years for it to fall off. I have been so depressed because my goal was to buy a home this year, but there is no way that will happen, even in the next 3 years. I feel like every time I'm just about to swim to the top to take a breath, I'm hit with more water. Please tell what I can do?? I haven't felt this low in a long time. Thank you in advance
I and many others have been in your shoes. You can fix it but it takes effort and time. My first thought is you've come to the right place. Second, as I tell others in your situation, stick around....you're going to learn a lot and if you apply what you learn from many people in this forum you will come out of this in a better place. My next thought is wondering what you're resources are and how well you can apply them. Can you pay down some of these loans ? What about CC's ? If you can provide some more data points it will help people to guide you along the right path to rebuild.
You're 100% UTL is very concerning and will likely be even more concerning to your creditors. I would expect once they do their periodic reviews of your CR's, you will see CLD's which will only compound your UTL problem. The high UTL is tanking your scores and the 60 day lates only made matter worse. Please provide some more details, Balances, accounts, other baddies on your CR if any.
Welcome to the forum.
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@Brandnew23 wrote:Well I have 8 credit cards, they are all if not maxed out close to it. All except for one Capital one card, $500 that is paid and kept for emergencies. Below are the balances that's I owe.
Discover -$4857
Discover -$4751
Cap1 QS -$2952
Walmart card -$187
CareCard -$3568
Merrick -$1416
Credit One -$1019
Cap1 Car loan - $19,038
multiple Affirm loans- $2223
Thank God, I do not have any collections, as older negative accounts fell off some years ago. I have 3 negative remarks on my credit report, the 2 recent Affirm loans and Toyota financial (car loan) reported a 30 day late payment back in April of 2019 ( I just noticed this when looking today). I know for a fact that is incorrect, I had not been late with car payment since 2017. I looked back at my bank statements and it shows a payment was made in April 2019 and I paid the car off in May of 2019. I plan to dispute this and I will be calling Toyota 1st thing on Monday. But like you said, the high utilization is what is killing my score, and now these 2 delinquency's have made it worse! Please let me know if I left anything out that can help you look at my situation better.
The Disco account balances.... your limits are 5-6k I assume ? What about the others ? Have you tried increasing the limits on any of these ? What were the original bal on the affirm loans ? Paying them down to <10% of orig balance would help. Seems you have two approaches to tackle, UTL and disputing the item you mention that is incorrectly reporting. If you have the means to pay down your CC balances , at least by half, that would help you in the short term. The 60 days lates are going to sting for a while but you can make improvements still. Time will do the rest. In the interim, you CANNOT be late at all going forward so it would be in your best interest to put these accounts on autopay if you havnt already. If you can tackle some of the higher balance to Credit Limit accounts by paying them down to 50% UTL, then perhaps tackle the smaller accounts and employ the snowball method of paying them down. Hard to know without knowing what you can afford to pay. If your're disciplined enough to not run up the CC's again, a consolidation loan would help you in this situation but, it might be a real challenge to find a lender to approve you with recent 60 day lates. Try to obtain CLI's on some of the accounts. It would be better to pay them down first, but again, not sure what your ability to do so is.
@Brandnew23 wrote:Well I have 8 credit cards, they are all if not maxed out close to it. All except for one Capital one card, $500 that is paid and kept for emergencies. Below are the balances that's I owe.
I am 47 years old, the highest my score has never been is 640.
Discover -$4857
Discover -$4751
Cap1 QS -$2952
Walmart card -$187
CareCard -$3568
Merrick -$1416
Credit One -$1019
Cap1 Car loan - $19,038
multiple Affirm loans- $2223
Before you fix your credit, you need to work on what it is that has gotten you into this ordeal, pretty much all of your life it seems like based on what you said.
The first thing I would do is write down all of the money you brought in for the month of April and compare that to every dollar you spent for the month of April.
Do you spend too much? Do you earn too little? Is it both?
Where is your money going and why isn't every dollar of that money going towards your credit card balances?
When you can answer the question above, you can start to work towards solutions to either or both of those problems. Feel free to tell us as well, many people here have been through similar, and there's definitely a way forward.
@Brandnew23 wrote:For the Discover cards my CL for one is $4800- I owe $4751 and the other Discover card, the CL is $6500 and the amount I owe is $4751. I had just gotten the CLI on both Discover cards and my Cap1 QS about a year ago. The Affirms loans were much more, because they were multiple loans. They totaled about $6500 and I paid them down to the balance I listed below. I will be able to completely pay those Affirm balances off in the next few months. I'm hoping I can get those 2 delinquents removed because they reported them on 4/3 and I PIF on 4/6. A rep at affirm told me they would fall off in 30-60 days, but if I wanted them to come off sooner, I would have to contact Experian and request them to be removed and he sent me the statements so that I could forward them as proof. The problem is, although I uploaded the statement on 5/3 a rep with Experian said it takes 3-5 days for them to be reflected in their system. In the meantime, Affirm responded to Experian in 2 days, stating that the information was correct and the errors "remained" on my report. So I will dispute them again next week, once my statements have hit my account. Because right now the report is showing "open" when they are not! I'm hoping that even though they have reported the 60 days late, it may actually fall of in the 30-60 time frame as I was told, because they are in fact paid! In regards to the snowball method, that is what I am doing now. I know that there is no way I can get a loan now with the delinquents on the account. But do you think, once I pay down some of my credit cards, that would help raise the score and l would be able to go for a mortgage to buy a home?? Being that I already had started to work on paying down the cards and paying off Affirm, the delinquents just put a wrench in any progress I thought I could make. I get paid twice a month and I always make more than the minimum, not a lot more but more than required, and I always pay on time! My payment history is (was) listed as 100% Excellent and the length of my credit history 27 years. I have 6 inquires in 3 years. 2 of them will be removed in June of this year, 2 next year and the last one in 2025. My goal is paying the cards down and possible still getting a mortgage loan with these delinquents, do you think it will be possible?? Also, please know I take complete responsibility for the state of my finances and the delinquents. I buy off way more than I could chew, I knew better, but didn't do better. I just want to clean up this mess and get to own my own home.
@GZG is correct. Get to grips on your past and plan for your future first and foremost. That said, I doubt the rep at Affirm is correct and that the 30-60 days will drop off. If you feel these reports are incorrect then by all means dispute, but don't expect it to go your way. As long as the 30-60's remain on your CR's, I sincerely doubt you'll be able to obtain a mortgage. And if you do , the rate will be ridiculous. Get Disco out of CL range. You don't want to exceed your CL when the statment cuts. Attack that card and pay it down.
Its not all bad. You have good payment history overall and excellent credit history ageing. Do not ever be late. Get an emergency fund going in a separate savings account so you dont have to rely on credit if the car breaks or any of a dozen events that could come your way. As the INQ's drop off and the UTL comes down, you will see progress with your scores. Take this in quarterly or 6 months blocks of progress. If you stay the course, I think you'll be pleasantly surpised with yourself this time next year or even sooner. Get the Disco out of the max CL range even before you snowball the rest.
Don't be discouraged, be focused !
The good news is that, while the lates will ding your score for years to come, their sting will be less over time.
The better news is that if you pay down your credit card balances, your scores will improve far more than the lates are hurting them, and you will be paying less interest, freeing up more money to pay down debt faster.
You definitely need to overcome the handbag addiction thing, and examine all of your other spending to weed out the things you can do without.
For the time being, STOP buying things on credit!
