The accounts not going into collections is a good thing. I'll let more experienced members comment on that.
It is quite often that a person starts off in credit and sinks rapid. My friend's 18-year-old daughter went through that. Both of them had the benefit of my guidance. I might have even bailed-out the daughter if push came to shove. But the mother was prideful, and despite my asking every two weeks..."Everything OK...what's her balance...what is she doing...did you check" ...after about 9 months, department store card and MasterCard, it was a total train-wreck. Talk about self-inflicted wounds...
In addition to secure-credit card, don't forget the secured bank loan. It's a no-brainer. I have one myself, in fact. I think (maybe $500). I set it on auto-pay, and forgot about it. It has been going for years without my active participation. Naturally, you want to maximize the length-of-loan/principal ratio. I did 5 years/$1000. Then you want to set the absolute minimum monthly auto-debit payment possible. The idea is to get maximum benefit from it being on the report before paid-off, and after it is paid-off. If life improves for her, she might have desire to pay it off. Not good. 
Just let it ride and do its job. She'll get benefit of:
- positive account
- diversity of accounts
- average age of accounts
For her, #3 is probably the most important, given her situation. The damage is alredy done. She should not wait to get clean. She should think about her future. She should get cards, then not (ab)use them. If she is the type of person who will do a repeat of this bad situation..well, you know what to tell her. But if she is type of person who learns from the pain of this mistake, then Discover, Amex, and Capital One have all been good to me to re-enter the credit game. If she can get these can grow with them, she'll be fine. Patience! [She should not re-enter credit game with "gutter" banks like Credit One, IMO.]
@Anonymous wrote:
@Queen_Etherea wrote:It's only on my EQ report because EQ is a bunch of poopslinging trolls who refuse to delete it even though it's been requested to be fixed by the loan company multiple times.
I'm not following this. What do you mean EQ "refuses" to delete it? If you have documentation from a lender that states that an item shouldn't be present, that's more than enough ammo to have EQ delete it. If for whatever reason they're dragging their feet, file a claim with the BBB and CFPB against them and upload your documentation. I'd be shocked if within a week the account didn't read exactly as your documentation states.
What kind of documentation would I need? I only have emails from the guy at CIG Financial saying he would delete the 30 day late. I've been wanting to call EQ to see what's going on, but I just haven't had the time or patience. Honestly, I kind of don't even care anymore LOL. I'm not going to be applying for anything until next year and the late will be gone by then.
Indeed. In my experience, a single 30-day late (the only derog after addressing high balances) was enough to keep me under 800.
@EW800 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:How long it takes to get back to 700's depends largely on the thickness and age of her file. If she's got a thick/aged file, rebounding from a 120 day late could happen quicker. I was able to achieve 750-768 scores with 90 day and 120 day lates on multiple accounts and those lates were around 3 years old. The reason my scores were still pretty strong considering the multiple major baddies was because my file was thick (maybe 15 accounts) and aged with my AoOA around 15 years and AAoA probably 5 years at the time give or take.
There are other people with thin/young files that can't break into the 700's even with their last major baddie being 6-7 years old, so it really depends on the profile in question.
I agree completely with BBS. I had two 120's showing, one from a foreclosure and another from a credit card settlement. After three or four years of good history, and a thick file, I was able to get most of my scores into the 740-750 range. The sting of the 120's absolutely stuck around every second of the seven years though, as it was not until they completely fell off that my scores went north of 800.
