Advice on how to improve please

[boilerfan]

Hello All,

This is my first time on this board so I thought I would post to request a bit of advice/expertise. I recently decided that I need to buckle down and improve my FICO scores. I currently have a EQ of 640 and a TU of 668. The reason I ask for advice is because back in college (2005 grad) I had a few bad hits to my credit. One was a 90 day late payment which resulted in a settlement for less than the amount owed. I also had an account for $73 go to collections (stupid huh). The last was a CC that had a couple 30 day lates and 1 60 day late. I have a Capital One CC ( $750 limit), a revolving account at Jared (my wife is expensive) with a $8500 limit, student loans, an installment account at Conns Electronics and an auto loan. All of these have never had any late payments.

I plan on getting the Jared paid off soon within probably 3 months. I am not as concerned about the Conns because it has 0% interest. I was wondering if it would be a good idea for me to open another CC account or maybe a store account. With all of the info I have given, will I be able to raise my FICO to 760+ anytime soon? Any and all advice will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Boilerfan

[Junejer]

Hello Purdue, and welcome to the forums. Please read Credit Scoring 101, if you haven't already.

In order to guess, errr, advise you, please post more detail, such as:

Jared $7000 balance/$8,500 CL
CapOne $500 balance/$750 CL

Also, what was the settlement for? When was the DOFD and DOLA? What is your state's SOL? When were the 30 and 60 day lates?

[boilerfan]

Thanks Byrdman. Good guess on the Purdue lol.

My Jared is currently sitting at about a 2800/8500 balance and my Cap1 is about 200/750. The settlement was for a Best Buy account that I opened to buy a new TV with while in College. I was pretty broke for a period of 3 months so I didn't pay my bill. I got a call from HSBC (the backer) and I settled for about $100 less than I owed ( ~$250). This was in 2003. The collection was back in Mid 2005. The last 30 day late was in 2005. The 60 day late was associated with the Best buy incedent. I failed to pay for 3 months so there was also a 90 day that I failed to mention with the same account.

I don't know what SOL stands for and I'm hoping it's not sh*t out of luck

Boilerfan

[Junejer]

Hey Purdue, first print out a couple of copies of these abbreviations and keep them near your computer.

FICO scoring looks at both individual and overall util. Ind util on Jared is 33% and CapOne is at 27%. Overall util is at 33%. You will get another score bump after you reach 29% and your best results will be to get to 9% or under. I also usually recommend having one card report a balance and the other ones report $0. My scores react best with one card reporting and the rest reporting $0.

Why don't you try a GW letter or 20 to HSBC for those lates?

SOL will be explained on the link that I have provided.

GL

[RobertEG]

IMHO, you have three major derogs (two 60+ late accounts, and a collection account).  These, together, are probably costing you close to 100 pts in FICO scoring.  So I would realistically start with 850 - 100, or 750 as the ballpark max you can expect for a while.

As has been said, your wriggle room now it to get %util down, preferably under 10%, make no unnecesary apps until you really need credit, and keep a flawless payment history in the interim.

I would not seek a new CC jist for FICO scoring, as this willl drive down your AAoA, and thus hurt your lenghth of credit history.  The only new account I would consider is an installment loan to improve your credit mix, but not a new CC, unless it has a huge CL/

I think the low 700's  is more realistic in the next 6 months or so, but not 760.

Message Edited by RobertEG on 02-25-2009 09:25 PM