I am currently trying to rebuild my credit. I have been paying my debts and settling them. I am currently in college and I am carrying some school debt but I do not have to pay that until I am out of school. I just got 2 credit cards from a link off of this website. All of them claim to help rebuild credit and that they report to the 3 credit bereaus monthly. The limits are $250 and $300 dollars. I may also go for one more card with a $200 limit and cancel the $250 dollar limit card. As it was supposed to have arrived but it has not and I have not activated it. I plan to take the $300 limit card and carry a $150 balance on it monthly. It will consist of my cell phone bill and my electric bill. My roommate will just give me cash for his half of the electric bill. I plan to physically destroy the card so as not to tempt me. I will be getting the money from my financial aid refunds. I will have extra money coming in to pay these bills so this shall not be a problem. My credit score is around 530 according to Experian. I have been using www.freecreditreport.com to get that. I also have been having trouble opening bank accounts due to chexsystems. I have paid all the debts that they were reporting on this report. I am still having trouble taking them off and would like assisstance with that. I am just currently wondering what I can do to rebuild my credit and to raise my score. I assume paying my debts was a good start. I settled most of them but I was told that if I paid them in full rahter than settle my score will go up. Is this true? If you all need any more information I will provide it. I really want to rebuild my credit within the next two years. None of my debts are more than $1600 (except for my college loans which I will start paying back while in college). I am on payment plans for the $1600 debt. I pay $50 a month and have paid down about $200 of it. I will hopefully settle it soon when I have money. But as of right now I want to pay my debts down and get them taken off of my credit report. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I want to know if paying off those debts or settling them in some cases has hurt me as well as any ways I can rebuild my credit. Thanks for all replies.
There are some non-Chexsystems banks. Just do a search on Google or on this board for links. There is an approach to settling debts called PFD (pay for deletion). There are plenty of threads on this board about thhat topic as well. Basically, whenn you settle for a certain dollar amount, you also get the creditor/CA to agree to delete the tradeline from your reports as well. It's a good incentive for them to delete if you make it a stipulation for getting your money.
Thanks. Will the settled debts still come off after the same time frame? Many are coming off within the next year or so but some will be there for a few more years. I have settled them but I would like there to be no record of them. Will the credit cards help build my credit quickly? And if I pay in full as opposing to settling will that help my credit in the long run?
Look for the "paid" Nutcase threads, they should give you some guidance on how to get already-paid collections off your report.
If you decide not to follow through, then yes it is. But you really dont have any other options other than leaving it as it is. The worse case scenario is that they do not oblige to your complaint and let the dings remain, which is the same thing you would have gotten if you had not tried at all. JMHO.
Thanks. I am going to send them out. Apparently everyone and their brother has pulled my transunion report. I just got all of them and my scores are pretty low. I will send this letter to all of them even though I settled for less in some instances. Do you think that will make a difference?
I dont think so, but do try to reword it a bit just in case they have seen this letter before (wink wink).
