Hello everyone, I've spent the past couple of hours going through a ton of old messages to get up to speed and to help me form a plan to improve my credit scores. Around six years ago I got in over my head with credit cards while in college. Unfortunately I found it easier to ignore the problem for the most part during that time, and my credit rating is still paying for it. The short term goal is for my wife and I to purchase a home in the next couple of months. With this goes the longer-term plan to clean up my credit. Our household income is over $100k, with 70% of that being my income. My wife has great credit (haven't pulled a recent report on her), but I'm afraid that her income would keep her from going it alone and qualifying for an acceptable mortage in terms of dollar amount. My credit scores are between 550-580, and from what I can tell I might be able to qualify for a satisfactory mortgage but at a 10%+ interest rate. Recently I had a couple of old accounts I settled. Not knowing the optimal way to settle, I simply negotiated a dollar amount and didn't ask to have things deleted from credit reports. Two of these were old credit card accounts, settled for less than 50% of the balance. The third was a student loan that had gone to collection (Maximus), settled for a little over the loan amount but got the fees and interest waived. Looking at my EQ report, I see the following: -An incorrect previous address. -A judgement from 1997 -a judgement from 1996 (might be linked to address reported incorrectly) -a collection account with a low balance -a collection account with status: PAID -a Charged Off account with last activity 12/1995 -an auto loan with status PAYS AS AGREED (this is paid off) -a Coldata account with last activity 11/1995, status of 120+ DAYS PAST DUE, and Prior Paying History: Collection Account -an account with last activity 11/1994, balance of $0, and status of TOO NEW TO RATE (no idea what this account is, date opened is about a month after I graduated high school) -a Fleet CC account with status PAYS AS AGREED, PAID ACCOUNT/ZERO BALANCE, ACCOUNT CLOSED BY CREDIT GRANTOR, but have 90 days late listed at 25+ times, last activity 5/2001 (when I paid it off, don't recall the details) -an account (was a Sears credit card, went to collection) status CHARGE-OFF, $0 balance, SETTLEMENT ACCEPTED ON THIS ACCOUNT, last activity 11/1995 -2 entries for US Dept of Education, last activity 9/1995, status 120+ DAY PAST DUE, $0 balance, PAID OR BEING PAID BY GARNISHMENT COLLECTION ACCOUNT (this was my most recent settlement, nothing related to Maximus listed) -an account with status CHARGE-OFF, $0 balance, last activity 7/1995 This is just my Equifax report, I'm assuming the others will list similar but not identical info. Some of these are very close to the 7-year limit, any hope of filing something to get them deleted sooner? Anything I can do with those Dept of Ed listings now that I've settled? Any help is greatly appreciated! EDIT: I should also note that there are currently 29 inquiries listed in the past year and a couple older than that. I really haven't applied for anything to cause a lookup, and I don't yet know how to determine what is a hard lookup vs. soft lookup. Lastly, I tried to open a CreditExpert trial but they're apparently unable to verify identity for me online, I have to send them info. Was able to open a trial Equifax account to check my file with them.
Welcome to the board! First off is sounds as though there MAY be some fraud going on with your credit file. You may want to contact all CRA's and ask for a fraud alert to be put on, be forewarned if you do this you will no longer be able to get online access. Second, if I were you I would try to dispute the ones due to fall off this year, send it CRRR, and either say "not mine" or "obsolete please delete", the only problem with doing this is fear of the CRA's reaging the account and lowering your score even more, so really it's a judgement call. Hopefully someone else can give you some info on what to do with the student loans. Also, why not put your wife first on the mortgage? I'm not sure if it would make a difference but it's worth a shot.
Start with your oldest derog account and dispute as "Not Mine". These may come off very easily. Call EQ to correct ALL personal info. Have them correct your name variations(if needed), DELETE your employment info, DELETE any incorrect address' etc.... They will do this all over the phone.
1. Dispute all collection accts. as "Not Mine" 2. The Fleet CC acct. - Dispute as "Never Paid Late" 3. send a validation letter to the "Too New To Rate" account. but this should come off after the dispute with the CRA. Oh yea, WELCOME TO THE BOARD!!!! and................courtesy BUMP
Great tips so far, please keep them coming. As far as disputes such as "not mine" and "never paid late", do those letters go to the CA, CRA, or both? I have a few of the addresses in my records for some of the CA's listed on my report, but a few I've never heard of. On the possible credit file fraud, I don't think that this is the case since "incorrect" address looks like it might have been a data entry error where the combined two parts of the street name to come up with a completely different name that does exist in a different zip code, thus the zip code is also incorrect. I think this would be easy to have removed, but I'm wondering if I could do a "not mine" on any accounts linked to that address. As far as a mortgage, I had been told at one point that the higher wage earner would be the primary on any mortgage, and I've also been told that my wife's good credit rating probably wouldn't matter since she's the lower wage earner, but I've read information that contradicts both of these thoughts recently. I might also note that we have enough cash to put 20% down on a mortgage, so I'm thinking that this should help as well since mortgage lenders don't rely solely on credit scores. It's just so darn hard to take the first few steps towards something that should be as exciting as a first home purchase and know that there's a good possibility of severe disappointment.
