Hi all
New to the forum. Goals are to stay in the garden for 12 months. My focus is on reducing utilization from 56-95% to 0-10% on all cards. FICO EX 645 TU 645 EQ 654.
Had a rough patch in 2016 with a job loss and medical issue. I used credit cards to fill the gaps but then only made minimum payments. Then I received several CLD and that lowered my overall CL and increased my utilization. FICO went from 760 to where I am today.
@beutiful5678 wrote:Just joining the challenge!
My goals for April specifically are:
- set up a budget and system for managing my personal finances ✅ (already done as of Monday but I'm going to put it down just so I can check it off);
- set up payment plans for Citibank/Calvary and Verizon. Calvary currently has a judgment against me and Verizon is in collections but neither are reporting yet. I'm hoping to mitigate the chances of them doing so.
Mid-month update! (It's been 8 days, LOL.)
Called the collections agency my Verizon account is with to set up a payment plan. That one is all set to go. Yay!
Also I've run into some complications while trying to take care of this Calvary/Citibank collections/judgment. My new goal for this account is to give them a weekly phone call until they'll set up a payment plan with me. Take my money, Calvalry! (Just, in the manner I want.)
@Anonymous wrote:Good Afternoon Everyone!
I know it's a little late checking in but I have been waiting to see if a new account would post before I put my updates out there......well it hasn't so I will have to wait until next month to see how it changes things. April wasn't as productive as I was hoping for, but if you re-call from last month right before I posted I had a collection show up on my credit report that must have been sold by the orginal creditor. The orginal debt is closing in on 7 years but the new collection really hurt me. Up until now I haven't been able to get very far with them, hopefully this coming month will be a different story. There are several things wrong with the way that they are reporting the debit so that should help me.
March scores were as follows
EQ 657
TU 670
EX 714
April scores are as follows
EQ 658 +1 (3 inquires in last 24 months)
TU 655 - 15 (2 inquires in last 24 months)
EX 713 -1 (6 inquires in last 24 months)
For the good things and there was a couple of them for me so it is looking up. I have had a Wells Fargo Secure card now for 27 months and just recieved in the mail a letter saying that the card is being moved over to a non-secured card. I also applied for the AX Gold Delta card and was approved with a $5000 limit, there was a 50,000 mile bonus for spending $1000 the first 3 months which I hit the first week because of some purchased that were already plan. I have about 24 days before I will hit the 63 day mark with it and will be hoping for the 3X credit limit. At the moment I have ran about $3K through the account and it is totally paid up with a zero balance. The $5k limit moves my total credit limit up to $33K............remember one of my goals was to get to $100K by the end of the year.
A couple of things that I am looking at that I want to work on as my scores improve are.....I have a CreditOne card that is about to turn 2 years old that I would love to dump, it's my lowest limit card at $1200. No matter what I do I can not get it to report $0 because of their monthly fee. They charge the fee then report the balance of $6 to the credit report agencies every month, no matter if the closing on the account is 10 days prior and it's paid in full, it is also the only card that I have that has a AF. This leaves me with only one secured card through USAA which they don't graudrate their cards and I redid my secured CD with them back in Janaury for another 24 months, so it will have to wait.
I also have a used truck note ($25,000 balance) with USAA that is now 14 months old (prefect payments) but with a interest rate of 10% I think that I can do better. I would like to try and move this to PenFed but I am waiting for my scores to improve a little more before opening a account with them and trying..........I also figured I would apply for a credit card with them at the same time.
The other thing I have thought about is taking another card with AX since I was approved for a couple of other card and it wouldn't be a hard pull. I thought I would wait until the 90 day mark before doing this and that would also give me the chance to get the first 3X CLI on my first card with them.
Any thoughts or input for anyone would be very appricated! Thanks!
Congrats of the WF unsecuring and the nice Amex approval!
My advice on PenFed would be to go ahead and join and open your share account with them. It won't hurt to have some history with them prior to asking for the auto refi and CC.
Good luck! 