I have been viewing the forum on and off for a few months and finally decided to create an account. I have had a couple accounts sent to collection in the past and I am now wanting to start repairing my previous mistakes. Two accounts were student loans. One I mistakenly paid of and did not request them to write it off and the second I am paying of monthly to Direct Loans. Another account is an eviction from 2006, I was living in another state and had to come home because my father passed away. I gave my roomate my share of the rent, but he did not pay. The debt is $500 which I can pay, I just don't know what or how to correctly. My tipping point was when I flew to New York recently and since I have no credit cards, I had to do a credit check in order to use my debit card to get a rental car. I did not pass and ended up with a $200 taxi ride. I have never had a credit card and have worked for my employer for the past 5 years. I received my free report March of this year so I believe I would need to pay in order to get a new one before March 2012. My questions are. Should I get a new report and if so where from? I have never received an actual credit score, do I need to know my score for credit repair? Would applying for a credit card be a god choice, or just assume I need a secured card? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Welcome to Creditnet! You actually get 3 free credit reports each year from annualcreditreport.com - 1 from each of the major credit bureaus. I suggest getting 1 from a different CRA about every 3-4 months as it's always a good idea to keep close tabs on your credit reports. If you don't want to pay for your credit score, a good way to just get an estimate of where your FICO scores stand is by using a site like CreditKarma. I think it's a good idea to at least know where you stand before you start trying to repair your credit. Otherwise, how would you know if what you're doing is working? If you want to know what your exact FICO scores are, you'll need to purchase them via myFico.com. If your credit scores are in the "bad" range (sub 650), you may want to start building some positive payment history by using a secured credit card. After 6-12 months of responsible use, you should then be able to upgrade to a regular credit card with rewards and lower fees.
On Credit Karma it said I have a 610 credit score. As far as secured credit cards go, is it better to put your balance higher or lower?
You want to keep your credit utilization as low as possible. It's best if you can keep it under 10%. That means that if you have a $500 credit limit on the secured card, you shouldn't be using more than $50 of your available credit at any given time.
I would just put a tank of gas on the secured card every month and then pay it off every month in full. It is easy to max out a secured card with a low credit limit. Thanks! Heather with BoostMyScore.NET
