jaided

Thanks for your help everyone! Ill let you know how it goes.

I have one collection account on one CR (TU) and I would love to remove it as its my only collection on any report. Its from a past due HOA balance that went to collections a little over 2 years ago. The collector is an attorneys office, if that matters. The debt was paid 2 years ago directly to the OC (my HOA). I have a copy of my cashed check to them and the collection has been updated on my report as paid with $0 balance. I did have to correspond with the CA at the time to get the balance due which included attorneys fees, but made the check out to the HOA and hand delivered the check to the HOA/property management office. My question is how do I dispute this now with TU? I cant (honestly) say that its not mine because I had dealings with this CA at the time in order to obtain the balance. I know they were the legitimately assigned collector. Or should I skip the CRA dispute entirely and send a letter to the CA/attorneys office? Im a little concerned that TU is going to verify and update the listing which will be even worse because it will affect my score as if it was a new collection. Thanks for any help!

I am paying off four credit cards currently with a goal of refinancing my mortgage as soon as possible. The balances are fairly high. I have $26k in credit available with about $20k balance across all cards. My credit is currently around a 680 and goes up each month as the balances go down. I was a consigner on one of the cards that was in my husbands name. It has a $1500 balance on a $2k limit. I just found out recently that the card was closed so there's now no available credit. With this in mind, should that be the card that I try to pay off first if my goal is to raise my credit score as quickly as possible? Is that particular card doing more damage than the others which are all at 80% balances or below? Thanks!

I've definitely made some mistakes financially, so I appreciate the advice. The credit card debt primarily happened because my husband lost his job and we ended up surviving on credit cards after the savings was tapped. Everything went on there - mortgage, car payment, groceries. Ugh. I'm so glad that's behind us, hopefully forever. My goal now is to get the debt down, refi, and keep saving.

Thank you so much! Great advice!

And then pay by APR. OP doesn't care about that Well, I definitely care, but I ran some calculators and I just feel like the money that I save by refinancing my mortgage is greater than any advantage to paying off the cards in order of APR. I can realistically pay them off within probably two years max (hopefully sooner) so I don't think the hit will be that bad. So, aim for 50% on all cards and then go to $0? Or maybe 50% and then 20-30% and then 0? I'm probably over-analyzing this, but just wondering. Thanks everyone for your help!

I would love to refinance my mortgage, but my credit score is currently too low (approximately 670's) mostly due to very high utilization of my cards. I also have a couple 30 day later from ~3 years ago and one paid collection. I'm finally in a good place financially where I can start paying down my cards. I know that the ideal way to tackle this is to go for the high interest cards first, but the sooner I can refi the better off I'll be do that's my first priority. I'm currently at 88% overall utilization. These are my cards (in order of highest interest rate to lowest): Card 1: $3228 balance of $5400 CL - 60% Card 2: $4012 balance on $4800 CL - 84% Card 3: $1900 balance of $2k CL - 95% Card 4: $14700 balance of $15k CL - 98% My goal is to get them all down to $0 or maybe 1% utilization on one card. But my main question is whether I would see the quickest improvement in FICO by paying down my first three cards to $0 balances before tackling the last big one, or should I first work towards getting all of them down to below 30% each and THEN go back and try to get them all down to $0 balances? I'm also concerned that my CL is going to go down as I pay each of these cards down, but I've only ever been late on one of them (30 days) and that was at least 3 years ago. I'm not sure if that would help to keep my CL's as is. I've actually received CL increases on two of the cards since my utilization was so high. Is that common? Thanks!!

The due date was 3/14. I paid on 4/15. I would have been less than 30 days late if I had paid on 4/13, at the latest.

Do the CRA's ever NOT report information given to them by creditors? I'm asking because I just had an interesting conversation with Santander where they told me that they always report 30+ day lates to the CRA's but the CRA's do not always report that information on your credit. They gave me an example of a time last year where I was 32 days late on my car loan, they reported me as late to the CRA, but the CRA never reported me as late on the credit report. They said that it was their experience that this happens fairly often. So, is it possible that this is true? Maybe the CRA doesn't report you as a 30-day late if you're maybe less then 35 days late? I have no idea why they'd do this, but just wondering if anyone has any experience with something similar. I have another post about this, by the way. It all came up because I accidentally forgot my car payment this month and paid it 32 days late this month (due on the 13th at the latest and paid it today, the 15th). So, I'm stressing about this being reported as a 30-day late on my credit. I'm hoping there's some magic loophole that will allow me to squeak by this time and then set up my automatic bill pay with them once and for all so this never happens again. Thanks!

That's exactly what I would expect with Santander and nothing less. But, then why have I not been reported late in the past when I was apparently 30+ days past due (according to their records)? Doesn't that seem bizarre? Even Santander said that they supply the bureaus with the info. But, regardless, the bureaus just sometimes don't report it as late. Is this common for the bureaus to do this?

Ok I called back. They said that they can't stop the information from going to the credit reports. Once it's late, it's late and their info is sent automatically. I can only disputed it after its on my credit report. But, they said that they often have customers who are often a little over 30 days late and the credit bureaus receive this information but never report the customer as late! Do the credit bureaus have a grace period when they report? The person I talked to used my account as an example and said that I was 32 days late one month last year (I have no recollection of this at all) and although they sent the info to the credit bureaus, it was never reported as a late on my credit report. Could this be correct??

No, I wasn't sure how far I should go with the credit dispute department. I figured I'd arm myself with some more info before doing anything else that would potentially cause any more damage.

I made a big mistake. I thought that I had my automatic bill pay set up for my car loan. But, I didn't. So, I just made a payment online to Santander that's 32 days late!!! So, this is definitely going to go on my credit as a 30 day late, right? Is there anything I can do to stop it before it happens? I called them and they said that it automatically reports as late right at the 30 day mark, it will report on my credit at the end of this month, and they don't offer goodwills. Any suggestions or am I just royally screwed? This comes at the worst time because I was just about to refinance my mortgage. I can't do that if my score drops 50 points. Thanks!

I really would do that, but my hours at my full time job are erratic so I'd have to just take kids on an emergency basis since I can't really plan anything. I'd suffer through the misery of multiple kids if I had to! PS, I'm really not trying to sound help-rejecting even though that's exactly what I sound like. I love these ideas!

Good ideas everyone! Thanks! I looked into task rabbit but they're asking for my social and bank information so that they can verify my identity and I just don't feel comfortable providing that!! I really need to look into selling some stuff. Otherwise, my options are limited to thinks I can do WITH a five year old. Otherwise I'll be spending on babysitting what I'm earning.