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