Hey Guys!!! I am new here and I am working tirelessly on my husbands credit. I have been working hard for about 4 years now, but persistently for about 10 months. I have had quite a bit of progress and then some set backs. I search the forums for some information on the freecreditreport.com reporting site. My husband signed up for it and now we are paying monthly for it and I like looking at it but want to make sure it is good site to reference his report on. We just paid off two of my husbands student loans that were late a month. We brought the other two current. Then we paid off a 1300.00 closed credit card that had about 300.00 past due for 120+ days. We have another credit card that is under 300.00 but is closed. We have a car loan paid on time since we got it 5 months ago. We have a store loan paid on time since we got it back in the summer. We also have a credit card that is open and has a balance that is at 90% which is from what I have read today hurting us so I am going to pay that down. Would it be better to pay it 100% and keep it that way? Or charge a little every month and pay it off? What is the best way to handle this credit card? I am waiting to see what the paid off student loans and credit card does to my husbands credit score! I am pretty excited! We have no judgments. We do have some medical collections. On his credit report it says he has 90.95% revolving credit available.. what exactly does that mean? Ok I am not going to ramble on! =) Thanks yall!
Freecreditreport.com is fine if you really need to be looking at his credit reports (Experian) all the time. However, don't rely on or pay for any of the credit scores they offer. They will just give you Experian FAKOs. If you need to know your real FICO scores, get them through myFICO. And once you reach the point when you don't need to be looking at his credit report on a daily basis, cancel the membership and pull your truly free reports from annualcreditreport.com. You get one free one from each CRA every 12 months. Regarding your credit card with 90% utilization, you definitely want to pay that off completely. Then use it to charge a little each month, gas or something, and keep paying the balance off on time and in full each month. Building that positive payment history, along with keeping your CU ratio below 10%, will continue to help improve your scores the most. The 2 factors combined count for about 65% of your FICO score. Oh, and 90.95% revolving credit available is a good thing. That means you're only using about 9% of your total available credit, which is great. Does that seem right to you based upon what you know about his credit situation?
I guess we don't really have to look at it everyday. I just like to see when things change. Since we just paid off so much it would be nice to know when those things hit positively on his report. I will pay the credit card off every month now! Thanks! I am not sure what they base only using 9% on. We try to pay for everything in cash and not take out loans. The only thing we have on loan is our car and a TV, which we did to boost his scores. Thanks for your help! This is tricky!
There's this URL i came across, and it had a list of things i had trouble with, i had a look see, and there it was.. Another option or possible way out of the hole i'm already in.. It helps you learn how to payoff credit accounts for 10-50% of the balance and have Clean Credit to boot. Haven't got the time to be dodging and arguing with collectors. And spending a tone of cash on credit cleanup attorneys. Wouldn't want to be begging bank customer service reps for lower interest rates.. If anyone else is going through this, i would be happy to share my info..
