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The Journey Thus Far..

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Anonymous
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The Journey Thus Far..

After lurking on here for a while, I figured I could go ahead and post my story. For a little bit of background, I was young and dumb once - most of us were - and I never considered the implications of having bad credit. Never really considered that it at all, really. I grew up in a household where we lived comfortably, my parents owned a few businesses over the course of my life, and I wasn't exposed to personal finance as a "thing."

Fast forward, I'm 26 and still technically living with my parents (I live in an in-law suite attached to their house), and help them pay bills as "rent." I've got an AAS degree, with loans that I wasn't paying on, and I decided it's time to go back to school to get my BS.. I can't get any new loans because I have existing loans in Default. "Huh?" That's when everything changed - I started down the personal finance rabbit hole.

 

First thing I did was sign up for Credit Karma - TU 520/EQ 530/3 Collections (Two student loans, one ER bill). Well, that didn't seem very good - I needed to figure out how to fix that. I found the Personal Finance subreddit, the Listen Money Matters podcast, and Mint. I started getting my advice from them. I got a Secured Platinum throught CapOne, to start countering the late payments, put $150 down and they gave me $250. Just getting the card bumped my score by something like 50 points. Six on-time payments later, they bumped the card to $550 and I got a QS1 with a $300 CL. Six on-time payments later, the QS1 got bumped to $600. While all of that was going on, I was negotiating with the collection agency that had my student loans - they signed me up for a rehab plan, where 9 out of 10 on-time payments got the loans out of default and into good standing, and they got scooped up by a new lender. Two down, one to go.  I was paying down the third collection too, a little bit at a time, but the student loans were more important to me.

 

Over the course of the next six months I started going back to school, paid off the third collection to get it removed from my score, found this forum, paid off a Self Lender loan, and scored three more cards (Citi DC $1k, Amex BCE $1k, Discover it CB $2k). A couple months later, I got approved for a Petal Card ($3.25k) - it's not going to get used much, but it's good for my util. Most recently, my Discover it CB got bumped to $2.6k and my QS1 got bumped to $700 - pretty sure I'm in one of CapOne's infamous buckets.

 

Present day [3B]:
684 TU/668 EQ/666 EX/0 Collections (But still 9 payments 60+ days late)

Revolving credit: $9.1k / Util: ~30% (just had tuition payments for the term)

Student loans: ~$10k, in deferment.

In the garden until further notice.

 

TL;DR - 20 months, +~150 points, +$9.1k revolving credit, -3 collections 

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2 REPLIES 2
xaximus
Valued Contributor

Re: The Journey Thus Far..

Congrats on your hard work and making it close to the 700's. Time will be your best friend for now, as the 60+ day lates get older, the impact will slowly drop. Once they fall off all together, then you'll see the largest increase. Have you tried reaching out to see if the 60+ day lates can be removed?


Scores - All bureaus 770 +
TCL - Est. $410K
Message 2 of 3
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: The Journey Thus Far..

Thanks! That's next on my list, actually. I'm not sure if they will or not, but it never hurts to try.

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