my credit was pretty bad during college and shortly after, mainly due to being very late (120+ days on several occasions) with my college loans. i had a pair of credit cards cancelled and was late on some car loans. this was from '95 through about 2000. currently i'm 27, earning a good salary ($87k/ann) and have no debt. i just pulled my credit report and could use some advice on some steps i can take to start cleaning it up. my equifax is 616 and my transunion is 649. ugly, huh sigh questions below.... i recognize that many of you are busy and i'm kind of new here, i did spend most of the day reading past posts & i found some answers to some of my questions. i do have some others... help would be appreciated and certainly i aim to fix my credit then stick around to share what i learned 1. equifax, experian and transunion all have different current and previous addresses. should i fix this? is there any benefit to doing so? 2. equifax still thinks that i'm in college, not at my current employer with whom i've been for a little over a year. none of the services know about my previous employer where i worked for over three years. should i fix this as well? again, any benefit? 3. nobody has asked for my credit report in over a year. i have not applied for a card. i have my one capital one $500 card that i've been using for about a year and a half, using monthly and paying off balances. with the above scores, is now a good time to apply for a card? 4. i have a car loan for $4500 with $170 monthly payments. i could pay this off tomorrow morning if it would help. this loan is about a year old and my record is unblemished, is it better to keep the monthly payments going? 5. i have another car loan with the same company (honda finance) that i closed a year ago, and it had some 30-day-late records reported... as a current customer (in good standing) on a different loan with the same lender, would it be worth my checking to see if they would be willing to remove the marks from my report? is it not worth it? i really do feel badly about my late payments (i think ethics really do figure in here, even if it's just a business to honda) but i don't know what's considered reasonable and what isn't. certainly, i'd be more than willing to cover any costs associated with my late payments to them... 6. i've had a couple of credit cards closed. one discover, one mastercard, the former closed about four years ago and the latter a little over a year ago. both were paid but it'd been regularly late. no hope of anything here? 7. i have a bank account that was closed back in 1993 that's still showing up on my report---why?! i thought the history only runs seven years? 8. i have tons of 30/60/90/120-day lates on my student loans, all of which were paid off two to three years ago... no hope here either? that's about it... i don't really need credit right now but i want to clean this up. i'm happy (even proud) to say that my days of debt and fiscal irresponsibility are a couple of years behind me. the numbers are low, though, and i am willing to do what it takes to fix them. just wanted to write (talk is therapeutic, huh?) and perhaps ask advice if you have any to offer. i'm not asking for free magic bullets by the way, i'm going to be spending the rest of the evening reading posts here and elsewhere. BUT, if you have any comments on the above eight points (or soothing words---i really could use some hope here!) i'd appreciate it a great deal... thank you, everyone, and good luck in your own quests!
interesting, one makes choices, then a few years later comes to a site like this and realizes that he made pretty much all of the wrong choices. in particular, it sounds like paying off credit cards, only to have them get cancelled, was a mistake. ditto on the student loans. and lastly, there are blemishes on my last car loan. my proposed strategy: 1. send letters of goodwill to Discover and MBNA America. even if it does no good, I do honestly feel badly about my negligence in the past and would feel better after having written. i am planning to write my own letters rather than use the template(s) here... i'll post what i write. 2. send letters of goodwill to Sallie Mae and the U.S. Dept of Education... my student loans are paid off but, well, i might as well try. And at least i'd be apologizing in the process. 3. send a letter of goodwill to American Honda Finance. i'm a huge Honda fan (can even send them a link to a website i made devoted to my car!) and have owned three of them. i'm midway through paying off my third Honda. so maybe it won't help but maybe it will... so long as i'm expressive of my enthusiasm for the company, i suppose... 4. try to get a credit card with a balance of $1000 or more, and use it to, uh, buy groceries. i don't know if a 616 FICO/649 TU is good enough but i'll try. that was listed as one of the "blemishes" on my CR: the lack of a card with a balance of $1000 or more notes: i have no bankrupcy, no writeoffs by lendors, just late balances that were referred to CAs. The majority of bad tradelines (ha, learning the lingo!) are 30/60/90/120 late payments. i am hoping that i can salvage this credit record into something that can qualify me for a decent home within the next two years. thoughts on my plan of attack?
