Since I've been lurking on this board and applying what I've learned, my credit scores (the TrueCredit FAKO scores) have gone from the 490's to right at 600. Along the way I've noticed a change in my junk mail. When I started, I wasn't getting any credit card offers in the mail at all. Then I started getting offers weekly from places like First Premiere. You know, the "We'll give you a card with a $250 limit but there will be $200 in fees charged to it when you get it." I actually accepted one of those offers just so I could have a positive tradeline on my report. A couple of weeks ago I had another major milestone... after a year of making payments, I finally paid off the Household Bank card that had been charged off. After I made the final payment, I called them and asked if they would consider re-opening the account, and they did! I just got the card in the mail today, and I'm still waiting for the account to show as open on the credit reports. Since it was originally opened in 2001 and never late until my separation in October 2006, and since it has a decent credit limit and a zero balance, I expect that to give my score a big boost. And I'm getting much better offers... I got an offer for a Best Buy Rewards MasterCard in the mail today, with a decent interest rate and only a $50 annual fee. I used the web address to accept the offer, and was immediately approved! It's been a LONG time since that happened! edited to add: My next step is to write a goodwill letter to Household Bank to see if I can get those late payments in Oct-Dec 2006 deleted.
Congrats on your successes, but are you sure they are reopening your account, and not issuing you a brand new account? I'm not sure I would want the old charge off reopened with the negs on there...it will be interesting to see how this works for you - please keep us posted!
They re-opened the account. Same account number. It was already on there with the late payments. I got a small boost in the scores when it went from "charged off" to "paid." I expect a slightly larger increase when it goes from "closed-paid" to "open." I think the main increase will be because of the lower utilization rate, since it will more than double my available credit.
Updated Last week I went to MyFico and paid to see my "real" FICO scores. Experian was showing 592. Today I saw on TrueCredit that HSBC has updated my account to show that it is open and has a zero balance. So I spent another $15 to update my Experian score and it is now 601. So the increase in the average age of my accounts and decrease in utilization was worth 9 points on my score. I'm going to wait until I have a couple more months of good payment history before I send them a GW letter and try to get rid of the late payments.
Don't bother with Goodwill... HSBC as far as I know doesn't respond to goodwill. I tried it with my own best buy card and it failed. May be better off disputing it and hope to get lucky...
How long did it talk My score is 490 I need to raise it to at least 580 to get approve for a home loan. what did you do to raise your score
Make all payments on time, keep your ratio of balance to credit lines (as shown on report--some only report high usage and not limit) below 30%, and build length of history. Have a mix of credit types--installment loans, revolving cards, store cards. As far as I know, that's the best way.
I have no new accounts, just some collections that I have not been paying on. Would it be save to call up these creditors and start making arrangements to pay these debts. I have already been through the process of disputing my credit file and have had numberous of item removed but I still have some items that the creditors continue to verify that they belong to me.
