Actually, I've been lurking here for several months after follwing a link from PsychDoc from The Motley Fool. I was a free trial member there, so could only lurk, but got extremely irritated at the way they flamed the Good Doc when he posted, so didn't join when the free time was up. I also got unbearably tired of reading daily stories about "wildgirl" doing her laundry and going to Wal-Mart. I started looking seriously into credit repair/ clean-up in January. At the time we had lots of credit balances spread out over way too many cards, and several late payments from 5 years ago when my husband was going into business for himself. FICO scores were 658 for Randy and 668 for me. Not bad, but needed to be better. Now, after lots of reading and researching and follwing advice I found on this board, our FICO's are up to 698 for Randy and 734 for me. I'm expecting another bump next month, as I sent out Goodwill letters to all late pays and have gotten them all removed EXCEPT - one 30 day late pay in Feb 1997 from -get this - our LOCALLY OWNED bank we've done business with for the last 12 years. They "can't change what the computer reports!" A mort. co. removed 3 30 days, MBNA removed 5 30 days from 2 accounts, Belk Dept. store removed 1 30 day, but our neighborhood bank won't remove 1 stinkin' late!!! It'll fall off soon enough, but it stinks that that's the ONLY neg on either report!! Randy's got several inq's on his report from vendors - the reason his is lower than mine. I'll work on those now. Anyway - thanks for all the help I've received from this board! I'm happy to be here! cruisermom
