How do you plan on improving your credit score in 2013?

Keep my debt utilization percentage low.

 

I need to pay down my credit cards to lower my utilization. Thanks! Heather with BoostMyScore.NET

 

Send validation and dispute letters to go after old collections (especially if they decide to re-age.)

 

I plan to improve my credit scores (and eliminate a lot of stress as well) by filing for bankruptcy in 2012. Ever since I lost my job in 2009, and quit paying all my debts, my credit scores have oscillated between 520 and 525, because certain creditors like to report a new "charge-off" status every couple months for the purpose of ruining your credit as much as possible. Now, I am being sued by Discover, so it looks like I will be filing soon.

 

remove remainder of negative entries from the credit report - for good

I'm probably in a bit of a unique position here. My credit is "ok" now; I fixed it up good a couple of years ago, in part by using the info I got on this forum.

But now I find myself at the 7 year anniversary of my turning over a new credit leaf; as of now there have been no new instances of negative credit rating problems for 7 years 1 month now, with the exception of a single instance of just a few-hundred dollar disputed thing that I should be able to buy off.

So now I need to read up on statute of limitations (SOL) type of stuff, including the subject of "time-barred" and FCRA time limits (to continue to publish negative credit items).

My next push will be to attempt the deletion of all tradelines that (are over 7 years since activity and) are negative. I have plenty of other tradelines that are positive that I'm not worried about a tradeline deletion looking like a hole in my credit history.

All of these subjects are info that I didn't need to know during my last credit repair operation, and so I did not ever learn it. Any suggestions on where to start reading? Searching here for SOL yields zip, I have searched manually but have not found.

Also, I have an old (original) AMEX card that I carried back in the 80's - its an AMEX Platinum. For those that haven't heard of these, they were only offered to the top 2 percent of AMEX spenders worldwide; the annual fee for that card was $300. (and it had benefits that made that way worth it, but I digress). I burned this card up with 5 figures of purchases every month and never a late payment. Is there any good to be done in going to ask AMEX politely if they would please start reporting that positive tradeline? Presently that AMEX card appears nowhere on my credit, despite it having been a personal credit card. Currently I am the co-holder of a very small unsescured AMEX card, if that matters.

Lastly, if anyone new to credit repair would like one guy's experience with doing hands on credit repair, fairly large scale (for me anyway) addressing well over a dozen negative tradelines, I'd be happy to share any info I've learned.

For example, the filing system I chose initially worked out really well. I got a bunch of usps priority mail flat rate envelopes from the post office, and every letter I sent or received went in its own envelope with the fold-over seal still sticking up - and on that seal I wrote the date, creditor, and about 8 words describing what stage the issue was at. Still do this day I can glance back thru all those tabs sticking up and see exactly which creditor and I were saying what, when.

I made a rule to never discuss any debt on the phone, only in writing, and always promptly. That worked well too.

Thanks to the senior guys here, in advance.

 

http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/031224fcra.pdf FCRA, look at section 605 (c)(1). SOL has to do with how long the creditor has to legally collect on the debt, varies by state, just google statute of limitations <your state>

As far as the Amex Plat card, are you saying the card was open and active in the '80's but is now closed since that decade? If so, the limit is 10 years on positive trade lines, and Amex, nor probably any other creditor would start re-reporting a 20+ year old CL as a current one.