April 2021 Check In Thread

[Anonymous]

Mizqtpye ... sometimes the game of credit feels like were playing pinball. As you know it sure is not a race!

Keep working your credit and don't rush card apps. Let a little time slide in. Otherwise in the early days we get small starting credit limits.

[Anonymous]

I am new to this challenge and starting right here and right now. I am excited with potential and possibilities. I am looking to build a house in the near future and purchase my first luxury vehicle!

[Anonymous]

I joined the garden last month just for a few weeks. Did my NFCU SSL last day or two of the month. Turns out since it wasn't a HP, I could have done it March 2. 🙃 I learn! 

I accepted Tomo invitation that should have run last day of the month. Can't tell. It might have run first day or two of APR 2021. I may be entering stumbling into  the APR 2021 garden a little late, but I'm here. At least until mid May. Might be until June or July. 

I can't offer a lot of seed sharing tips here. I'll be cultivating succulents. 🌿🌿🌿 🪴 🪴 🪴

Meanwhile, I am inches away from 670, aka GOOD Credit.

EQ (I dont remember. Will come back and edit it)

EX 657 (had fallen to 642 after my inadvertent HP when I thought most were SP's spree early March.)  This is the one which matters most for me. Where I live, this gets pulled most often. Now I know and baby it. 

TU 663 🙏🏻🙏🏻 Reported by WalletHub which is my CS Crack, but is not actually the one most often being use. 🙃😢😂

A few things about my garden plot:

I recently paid off my FH FreshStart. It graduated 👩🏻‍🎓 to the Advantage Card. I don't intend to use this a lot, so it may not grow with their tacky Temporary Increases offers. It graduated at SL $500. Which was about $400 more than my CL. I got about a 3 points increase it looks like from that. 🙏🏻

Paid off Seventh Avenue. Cute items. Mildly over priced. Added them in Oct when my credit was in the 500's. So I am grateful for them. They did raise my CL to $600 but the CLI doesn't seem to be reporting. If all that's the case, I won't buy anything more from there again even to keep it alive. 

I did add the NFCU SSL the final days of March. It took about 36 hours to show in the app at which point I did the immediate massive pay down. Because FH FreshStart was apparently being reported as a loan, I didn't receive any new Credit Mix bennie from this. However, it replaced it within the same 2 weeks in the same reporting month. So, roughly it's a wash. However, it's a better loan because it deepens my LTR 🥰🥰🥰 w NFCU. It may have gotten me a point or two. 

I added a bunch of accounts EOM January and late February/Early March. Not quite well, strategically. These are store cards, but I could have done it better. 1 or 2 I added because they were in the "I Can" category. Getting a LOWE's, Jared/Kay, and Macy's would have been better investment of my HP's. Again, most were on a SP List which turned out to be HP's and I hadn't done enough homework on them before app'g. I'll acquire those a bit later. Maybe in 6 months. Maybe longer. 

My Cap1 Platinum secured card got its first little auto CLI of $100 in March. 

I'm going to cultivate for awhile. It'll be EOM July for the cards added in Jan to possibly Auto CLI. JUNE 15 for NFCU to possibly give me a CLI. 

I have 2 old Medical CA on my report from 3 years ago when my hospitalization in 3 places, and then ER visits made billing and payments a God awful mess. One popped up out of the blue. Turns out my insurance will reprocess it because I maxed out that year. So, I'm getting the other two validated and then I'll get back to my insurance first. The second of the two got resold and I don't even recognize the underlying MD. The Great Tidying Up, PT 2, has commenced. PT 1 was a $2K ambulance bill that took 4 months to clear. My insurance had paid it before it went to collections. Disputing it at the Credit Bureau level did nothing. They just asked the CA, is this real? Of course, they say yes. So the dispute got rejected 🙅‍♀️. I phoned my insurance, did the long wait and painstaking walk through, but got it confirmed they'd paid it. They sent documentation to us all. 3 weeks later, it did get removed completely. I anticipate these next two will take a bit less time now that I know not to bother disputing with the Credit Bureaus. It'll take likely APR and into MAY to tidy them up. There's one which is legit. If my insurance won't reprocess, I'll go to the OC. Like them. They were just a bit all over the place, too, which is why it went to Collections. I don't even remember a bill from them... 🙃. The other may take getting hospital records to identify the doctor and prove 37 days of actually treating me. There were only 2 doctors who treated me close to that often. 

I'll be adding coffee grounds to the soil of my garden. Enjoy cultivating your plots. 

[Anonymous]

Happy April everyone!

March was pretty productive for me:

• Paid off two more cards -- 6/8 reporting $0!
• Paid off my previous Disco balance transfer, requested a CLI again and was successful this time! Then did another BT.
• Because of the BT, my beastly Amex balance is finally under 50% util -- currently at 33%. Only other card with balance (Disco) is under 50% also!
• Received 3 responses to my 8 Citi goodwill letters but no success yet.
• A number of CLIs to help with utilization + some promo interest rates (sadly, no change to actual IRs).
• Froze my credit reports and cleaned up some names and addresses.
• Emergency savings hit $10k mark!
• Overall util reporting 28% but actually at 15.74%, as I made some additional payments to my Amex & Disco after they reported. (Yay, tax refund!)

March CLIs + $23,100 total

• + $2,500 on Discover
• + $3,800 on Amex (auto CLI)
• + $11,100 on Best Buy VS - I did screw up on this one and got a HP for it. At least it went through and was worth something.
• + $5,700 on Macy's

Interest Rates

• Discover - 0% (!!) promo IR on all new purchases for 12 mths
• Amex - 16.24% (down from 17.24%) on new purchases for 12 mths
• Citi said it would take 3-5 days to review the request. It's been 2 weeks and I still haven't heard back so will follow up with them.
• The other cards either declined stating I have a competitive rate, that IRs are auto-reviewed, or that CSRs don't have ability to do so.

And onto April...

April Goals

• Send out another batch of goodwill letters to Citi.
• I'm getting LASIK this week. ($4850, ouch... but will save $$$$ in contacts over the next 40+ years!) I'm putting it on my Amex for the Delta bonuses, but it will bring the Amex back up to 50%, so I will focus both of my paychecks this month to bringing that back down.
• Pay my Disco down to 29% util.
• Garden the rest.
• Continue to save in my emergency fund + cleaning up my self-managed brokerage account.

Current

FICO 8: Equ 717 (+3), TU 713 (+3), Exp 726 (+5) - minimal rise but going in the right direction!

FICO Mortgage: Equ 697 (-3), TU 701 (+2), Exp 723 (+2)

Vantage 3: Equ 723 (+19), TU 723 (+21), Exp 713 (no change)

One of my 30 days turned 2 yo on my Exp report this month! Another 3 months for Eq & TU.

[mgood]

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@Anonymous wrote:minimal rise but going in the right direction!

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That's usually the best we can hope for.

[Mizqtpye]

Thanks for the words of wisdom @Anonymous I will certainly adhere to your advice!!! 

[Anonymous]

I appreciate what you wrote. I do feel like I am playing pinball 🤦🏾‍♀️.

[Tonya-E]

Just checking in for the month. No major changes. BUT I am excited that this month I will have my student loan debt under 60k! Yes, it's still a lot of debt but a major milestone as I was at $72,949 this time last year. I feel I have made progress despite having a couple of setbacks. That's been my main focus  for the past year while taking advantage of the 0 interest/forebearance.

I hope everyone is successful at reaching all of their goals and don't let setbacks that come deter you from where you are trying to go!

Happy April Everyone!

[VanderSnoot]

Good to see everyone and congratulations on the rewards of your hard work.

I joined MyFico two years ago, and a few months later went on the stereotypical credit bender/app spree. Here's the good news: all of those inquiries age off at the beginning of May, and I am a few weeks away from losing the "credit seeking" moniker. My reports won't be completely clear of inquiries because I opened some savings accounts, but I'll be down to 1-2-1 on the 3 reports, which looks significantly more reasonable. I'm not expecting a score bump, though TU is sensitive to new credit and may move a few points as these accounts age.

[M_Smart007]

Happy April Everyone! .. here is my late check in

I have (2) Birthday's this month.. (myFICO - and myBirth)

Wishing everyone a "Good Month"