If your secured USAA card has lived beyond it's usefulness, then you know the answer. Time to move onto more useful lender / products that will graduate or grow.
Using your cash deposit to pay down your debt appears to be the logical choice. You're at 70% utilization on that Navy card, so every little bit helps.
@Anonymous wrote:What are your thoughts of a debt consolidation loan. NFCU requires that they be for the full amount of the card, but I could use that $999 amount before 10% utilization to leverage PFDs. But I think I have a couple accounts that simply refuse to do PFDs and my understanding of collections accounts is that 2 is worse than 1 but if you have two you might as well have 100. Only thing I can think of is work toward PFDs from the newest acct back, to at least maximize the time since delinquency.
sorry, I'm brainstorming. But thoughts are welcome.
1. I agree with @AllZero that closing the secured account & using the security money to pay down debt is a good move.
2. The closed account probably won't disappear from your reports for many years, so closing it will likely have no near term effect on your AoOA and AAoA.
3. At this stage of the game, you probably won't be able to get a debt consolidation loan that will have a reasonable interest rate, so I'd skip that and concentrate on getting your scores up.
4. You can just send flurries of verification letters to the bureaus; that sometimes gets rid of some of the negatives.
@Anonymous wrote:As 7 of my 11 collections accounts are medical debts from 5+ years ago and none of them have balances over $400, I'm cautiously optimistic that the OCs will agree to delete them.
the other 4 are:
enterprise rent-a-car, Transworld Systens, $706.
credit one bank, LVNV Funding (waiting for deletion)
Sentral Financial, National Credit Adjusters, $112
AEP, Penn Credit Corporation, $267
but when you said send off a flurry of verification letters? Are you talking about debt validation? Or is that like disputing.
Just a letter requesting that the bureau verify an item. They will seek verification from the creditor. If verification doesn't come within 30 days, the item is deleted. If verification comes in late, the item is restored.
Some creditors don't bother responding to some requests.
@Anonymous wrote:As 7 of my 11 collections accounts are medical debts from 5+ years ago and none of them have balances over $400, I'm cautiously optimistic that the OCs will agree to delete them.
@gdale6wrote:
You want to settle anything that is updating monthly first, these updates keep your fico score from moving up. For the CAs you try the PFD if they do not already have a stated deletion policy like PRA and Midland have.
There are some extra things that can be done with those medicals
Medical collections are some of the easiest to get removed from your CRs, here are the steps that you should follow to address them:
1. Call the OC and see if insurance can be billed, (or-rebilled), collections ultimately paid by insurance get removed per new rules that came from CRAs settlement with 22 state AGs. If not then
2. see if you qualify for Charity Care, if not then
3. ask that they recall the collection in exchange for full payment
4. Send the reporting CA a PFD offer
5. Google the HIPAA Process and contact its creator for help, this process cannot be discussed in any forum of myFico.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:What are your thoughts of a debt consolidation loan. NFCU requires that they be for the full amount of the card, but I could use that $999 amount before 10% utilization to leverage PFDs. But I think I have a couple accounts that simply refuse to do PFDs and my understanding of collections accounts is that 2 is worse than 1 but if you have two you might as well have 100. Only thing I can think of is work toward PFDs from the newest acct back, to at least maximize the time since delinquency.
sorry, I'm brainstorming. But thoughts are welcome.
1. I agree with @AllZero that closing the secured account & using the security money to pay down debt is a good move.
2. The closed account probably won't disappear from your reports for many years, so closing it will likely have no near term effect on your AoOA and AAoA.
3. At this stage of the game, you probably won't be able to get a debt consolidation loan that will have a reasonable interest rate, so I'd skip that and concentrate on getting your scores up.
4. You can just send flurries of verification letters to the bureaus; that sometimes gets rid of some of the negatives.
Excellent advise from @SouthJamaica
Your scores and derogatories are holding you back. Unfortunately, because of that, your chances for loan approval is low.
As you stated, tackle the PFD first, then come up with a course of action for the remaining collections.
Alternatively, if there are old items close to 7 years, you can wait for it to be removed from your credit report, request EE Early Exclusion or offer a settlement.