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I played the shell game with credit in January. Moved $1000 to a diff CC on a 3% transfer, 0% interest offer. Moved another $1100 from a home equity loan @4%. All so I could lower my int pmt on a 19.99% card. That balance is now at ~$14K. Going to ask for a rate reduction soon.
Howver none of this has moved the bar on my score. Probably too soon to tell anyway.
Hello All,
January didn't bring me the progress I was hoping for. I was hoping to pay off one of my 6 credit cards in full by the end of January but my cash flow wasn't flowing the way I thought it would so I made only the minimum payment. I am doing the snowball method, but my snowball is not forming very well. I am hoping to make progress in February. I did however pay off my Best Buy card that I used to buy a Christmas gift for my daughter. It was $150 and I regretted using the card and I am so happy I paid it off. Now I have to get moving on my bigger balances. I have been contributing to my savings which I am happy with myself for sticking to that plan. I have to stay focused and not get discouraged when I am not making as much progress as I want to. Good luck to everyone. I hope others had more success in January.
Well it's been a month but my Experian score is still unchanged at 671 *sigh*
On the other hand, I have some progress to report:
Paid off one credit card with a small balance in January (hoooray!!)
decreased indebtedness by $825
Signed up for mint.com, set up a budget & have been scrutinizing my spending
So i'm on the right track!
January was good month for me. Here's what I did:
1. Paid of 3 credit cards in full. I have one more CC to pay off which is my Care Credit card that I used for Dental work since my old job did not have dental insurance.
2. Sent out some GW letters to a few past creditors that reported late payments on my account. I received a letter from Comenity Bank (Victoria's Secret) saying they would remove my one late payment.
3. Improved my credit score from 503 to 562!- My credit cards that I paid off have no even been reported with 0 balances yet so I know my score will increase some more.
Goals for February:
1. Reduce Care Credit balance from 2200 to 1500.
2. Send out more GW letters to my past car loan creditor. I have a few late payments reported that I would like to get rid of. The car was paid off about 1 1/2 years ago and was even paid off a few months before the term was for.
Can't wait to check in for March!
Ok here's my list and updates in red! I think I had a pretty good month looking back at this!
Credit Goals for 2012:
-Get score up to 670ish (higher, if possible, of course!)- Score bumped during january from 634 to 640!
-Pay off all credit cards (made big progress last year - down to only $1,400 on a BOA card and $300 on a Chase) Paid OFF the Chase chard and paid down the BoA by $500 so I only owe about $800 total now!!
-Get a CLI on at least one card - Not yet
-Get rid of at least one baddie- Not yet, though I did send out some more GW letters/emails
-Pay off old charge-off from closed bank account overdraft- DVed them so I can figure out exactly how much this is
Savings Goals for 2012:
-Get up to $1,000 in my emergency fund (I always seem to cap out at around $500 before draining it...)- DID IT!
-Open an IRA and put at least $150/month in it for future 'life stuff'- DID IT! (Except I'm doing $100/month and putting the rest towards credit payoff)
-Continue building long-terms savings (at $100/month)- After reading some financial books, decided to focus on paying down credit first THEN building up savings
Well, I just started on the road to repairing my credit a couple of days ago - but this is my progress so far.
I am curious as to how much paying $1000 of debt off and utilization dropping 10% will help my credit score
Next steps are to pay all my credit card debt (Total of $2,440 as of right now) down to at least 10% of utilization! ($935 or less)
I pulled my score 1/23 so I won't pull it again until 2/23 to see what is going on there.
For the month of January:
I sent out 5 PFD and 1 GW
One baddie removed (Jefferson Capital/Salute Visa).
This is early Feb reporting but on 2/7 I received a PFD acceptance for one of my baddies. I sent off the payment today 2/8!!! YaY
Well, it has been a busy month. I finished of a student loan rehab in December and those loans were picked up in January. I lost the collection TLs as a result on all reports and the defaulted account onEQ so far. GW failed for a Chase CO, but they bumped my DOFD in the process and so I disputed the account as obsolete and it disappeared from all 3 after 2 or 3 days.i think when I was denied somebody gave me an out by moving up the falloff date for me, strange but I will take it! A paid less than owed on Discover went away after I disputed with terms off the payoff agreement. They told me they were getting late accounts off their books so they could get TARP funds and so they would wave the fees and interest accrued if I made 4 payments to get rid of the debt with no penalty. That was a quick delete as well. A round with AFNI including a PFD request denied before I realized that it was probably incorrect to begin with. I wrote a dispute and a specific DV and sent them off a few days apart and AFNI deleted. That leaves me with a stack of lates on a paid car loan from a local CU. they had reported differently to all of the CRAs so I disputed and they corrected the TLs, losing a 30 and a 60 in the process on all 3 reports. I am going to work on a GW for them this month and see if they will help me out with at least the 90 day late. My worst nemesis in all of this is West Asset reporting on a paid medical account. I paid the hospital about the time it was reported to the CRAs and have tried disputing using the medical dispute plan. So far that got it re,over from TU and a pretty curt letter from Experian saying they won't delete.
The net result is I went from 560s for Fakos in January to 636s in February and myfico eq went from 642 to 668. I am trying to get things a little cleaner so I can apply for our first CC in 5-6 years. As soon as I get West Asset off of EQ I am going to give USAA a try for a card and see how that goes. The car loan lates might get me, but they are all about 3 years old at this point. January was pretty good, let's see where February gets us!
Well I dropped from a high of 636 in December to 618 currently.
1) applied for a target card and Capital One rewards card in January. Was approved for both - Target $300 and CO $2000. Very close to replacing my secured card balances so I can close those out later this year without a ding to my available credit or utilization.
2) started a repayment plan for the last of my outstanding debts from 2007, adding an additional payment to the garnishment that is in place. Goal is to drastically reduce/eliminate this debt in 2013 and help my utilization and set the stage for GW later.
3) found the posting dates for all my credit cards and set my calendar to pay balances off/down prior to posting to maintain my utillization.
4) mailed another round of goodwill letters and a PFD for a past debt that appeared in January, I hope this was the primary source of my score drop.
Hoping I will get a bounce as one secured card and an auto loan hit one year with no negatives at the end of this month and the inquiries from these age as well.
Now I feel better seeing that I am doing things that will contribute to improvement this year!