Hello everyone. Here is my situation. I am 23 years old with a 503 credit score. That is shameful in itself. My first year of college I opened at least 5 credit cards and maxed them all out. 4 department store and 1 or two visas. I also have a cell phone, cable, city utilities, and a two old bank accounts on there. They still sit on my credit report to this day, totaling about $8k. They are all in collections as this occurred in 2000. Since then I have graduated from college and am ready to purchase a house. I really want to take care of this so I can move on with my life. I had gotten my score up to 585 last year, but then I bought a car which produced at least 20 inquiries on the report dragging my score down to 503. I would like some advice on the best attack mode. Oh there are also student loans but none of them are in repayment yet, so I don't think they are negatively affecting my report. Good stuff on my credit include my car note, and 2 loans from my credit union that are being paid on time. Any suggestions? What type of time frame am I looking at. I am willing to pay the $8k, but is that the best way of doing things?
The inquiries if they are for a car purchase,acurred in a couple week time frame.they should only account a a single point or 2..Inquiries work different for auto and Mortgages than other types of credit.. You should get the Utilitys paid. If its showing negatively on your report Than tell them you,d like to do pay for delete..I,d do the same with the Cable & cell bills. Why do you have 2 Bank accounts on there? For the Store accounts and Visas. You could try sending Debt Validation letters to the OCs and/or CAs. Dispute letters to the CRAs.You will find sample letters here on this site....Send everthing CMRR..Keep all papers. Check to see what the SOL in your state is also..
But FIRST: Have you opted out? Have you removed old or inaccurate addresses from your credit reports? Have you ordered hardcopies of your credit reports. Start here. Then you can start disputing debts on the credit reports.
There is $63 from Bank of America and $129 from the Sunshine State Credit Union in Florida it states it was a bounced check. I don't know what opted out, I checked the credit term glossary but I don't think I saw it in there. I did order hard copied of my credit reports to work from. The first thing I did was update and remove old and inaccurate addresses, I have only heard from Trans Union so far on this. I have started to pay off some of the accounts under the direction of my lender. The two CA's that I have delt with will only send paid in full to the bureaus and then send me a pay off letter. They said I can send the letter into the bureau for them to delete the account if it is not off within 30 days. Is this accurate? How do I do the pay for delete? How often is it possible to pay for delete? Leslie
Read this: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/protect.htm A "paid in full" will do you no good because it will still have the derogatory information (120 days deliquent, etc) and that's what does the damage to your credit score. You want that baby deleted from your report. See below... You have to negotiate this with the collector. The idea behind "pay for delete" is you have something they want (cash). You want your trade line deleted in exhange for paying them off. It's not something you do repeatedly on a single trade line (you pay them off, they delete, end of story) but you can do it with as many different trade lines as you want deleted. It's an agreement between you and the collector only. Do NOT send them any $ until you get a deletion offer from them in writing.
