Newbie - Looking for confirmation this is the right approach

[jl326110]

Hi CB - first off, truly impressed with the amount of information and knowledgeable people on this forum. I really appreciate all the information sharing and people willing to help.

 

We are in the process of repairing our credit (wife + I). I recently ran my credit score on creditkarma.com and was shocked to see it drop to the mid 550s (thankfully my wife is hovering just above 700). Although I never maintained my credit report, I was definitely surprised to see it so low and it did serve as a wake up call! We have a goal to apply for our first mortgage in 2-3 years. After finding this forum and reading the past week or so I think I'm ready to take some action. I'd be really grateful to anyone that takes the time to read through and confirm this is the correct approach and offer any advice.

 

1. Pulled all 3 credit reports from annualcreditreport.com
2. Opted out via outbound link disallowed.. I did the 5 year online method. I'm thinking we should do this permanently (we could always opt back in)?
3. I am going to call to remove all old and inaccurate addresses/names/phone numbers in the "Personal Information" section. There was quite a few that are wrong or outdated. It seems this is probably the only thing CB suggests we remove via phone call? Or would mail be safer/better?
4. Remove Negatives from our accounts. I have a few and they are as follows:

• 30 day late payments: I have mostly 1 late payment (30 days) across 7 different credit accounts. Should I write a "GOODWILL" letter and ask for an adjustment? Or should I ask first for the creditor to validate the account? If that fails should I keep asking for a Goodwill adjustment or ask for a Pay to Delete? Essentially question here - what is the best order of steps and if I do one will it affect the other (i.e. Goodwill adjustment will cause a validation attempt to be denied).
• Closed in Settlement: My wife has 2 accounts with Chase that were closed/settled for less than full balance. What is the best approach to get this removed? The unpaid balance ranges from 2-4k. If we do a pay to delete would we expect to pay that much? Finally, these accounts are expected to be removed from our report on 01/2017... should we just wait it out since we're not planning on buying a house any sooner?
• Closed accounts: We have a few accounts that just show as closed by "grantor". They appear to be in good standing, no late payments, no high balance... just closed by "grantor". Should I try to get these removed? If so, how?

Once all the above is done, we're going to try to open some positive accounts, probably starting with a secured credit line. We also need to pay off some high balance accounts to improve our utilization ratio.

 

So that's the plan! Please critique and let me know if I'm doing this right. I really appreciate it! Thank you ALL!

Edited November 26, 2014 by MarvBear

[Quietman]

First, congratulations on having a plan!

 

Write good will letters for the lates, best bet is to find someone that matters (not a CSR) for the decisions. I believe DV only works for collections.

 

As far as closed by grantor, if the account is in good standing (no lates, etc) I don't think challenging them is a good idea. They are contributing to your oldest credit, etc.

 

For a secured card, I went to US Bank and deposited $500. In 12 months the card went "unsecured" so I deposited money every month and at the end of the year had a $5,000 unsecured tradeline.

 

There are many others here that I am sure will have additional advice, good luck!

[NoPresetSnarkLimit]

Hi CB - first off, truly impressed with the amount of information and knowledgeable people on this forum. I really appreciate all the information sharing and people willing to help.

 

We are in the process of repairing our credit (wife + I). I recently ran my credit score on creditkarma.com and was shocked to see it drop to the mid 550s (thankfully my wife is hovering just above 700). Although I never maintained my credit report, I was definitely surprised to see it so low and it did serve as a wake up call! We have a goal to apply for our first mortgage in 2-3 years. After finding this forum and reading the past week or so I think I'm ready to take some action. I'd be really grateful to anyone that takes the time to read through and confirm this is the correct approach and offer any advice.

 

 

• Pulled all 3 credit reports from annualcreditreport.com
• Opted out via outbound link disallowed.. I did the 5 year online method. I'm thinking we should do this permanently (we could always opt back in)?
• I am going to call to remove all old and inaccurate addresses/names/phone numbers in the "Personal Information" section. There was quite a few that are wrong or outdated. It seems this is probably the only thing CB suggests we remove via phone call? Or would mail be safer/better?
• Remove Negatives from our accounts. I have a few and they are as follows:

• 30 day late payments: I have mostly 1 late payment (30 days) across 7 different credit accounts. Should I write a "GOODWILL" letter and ask for an adjustment? Or should I ask first for the creditor to validate the account? If that fails should I keep asking for a Goodwill adjustment or ask for a Pay to Delete? Essentially question here - what is the best order of steps and if I do one will it affect the other (i.e. Goodwill adjustment will cause a validation attempt to be denied).
• Closed in Settlement: My wife has 2 accounts with Chase that were closed/settled for less than full balance. What is the best approach to get this removed? The unpaid balance ranges from 2-4k. If we do a pay to delete would we expect to pay that much? Finally, these accounts are expected to be removed from our report on 01/2017... should we just wait it out since we're not planning on buying a house any sooner?
• Closed accounts: We have a few accounts that just show as closed by "grantor". They appear to be in good standing, no late payments, no high balance... just closed by "grantor". Should I try to get these removed? If so, how?

Once all the above is done, we're going to try to open some positive accounts, probably starting with a secured credit line. We also need to pay off some high balance accounts to improve our utilization ratio.

 

So that's the plan! Please critique and let me know if I'm doing this right. I really appreciate it! Thank you ALL!

1.Did you get the paper copies of your reports or view online? If online, you really need the paper copies, they contain more information and will serve as proof possibly as well as a valuable tool to compare before/after as you make progress.

2. Yes, you can opt back in at any time, expect a delay when you opt back in seeking pre-qualified offers for credit. Also, in my experience any online communication/action with the CRA's forces you to accept electronic disclosures which I believe interrupts the opt out you have in place so for safety sake opt out again if you find you have to do anything electronically, best practice is paper only snail mail for all your interactions except.....

3. Removing old/inaccurate address is best accomplished by phone, easiest/fastest.

4. Goodwill letters, worth a shot, and try try again if at first you don't succeed. At the cost of a stamp the rewards of a successful GW adjustment could be huge.

5. DV for 30 day lates are not appropriate, use DV for collections.

6. Closed by grantor is fine.

Congrats on trying to formulate a thoughtful plan of attack, it's a process and takes time, a lot of time to see progress, stick with it and keep reading. Keep good notes of what you've done and when, it can all get real jumbled dealing with all 3 CRA's.

Edited November 26, 2014 by RecoveredDebtaholic

[ICANHASMUNY?]

Please read these pinned topics by the masters of credit repair first.

 

http://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=425496

 

http://creditboards.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=425508

[mendelssohn]

Use paid copies of your reports. The free annual reports give the CRAs 45 days instead of 30 to complete disputes.

[barco]

Also consider the online chats for goodwill deletions. English is almost always a second language for the chat peeps and they sometimes think you are asking for a deletion of late payment fees and say they can do it. In reality the CSR reps do not have this power but we are looking for something in writing from the bank saying they will do this for us. People have printed those logs out and mailed to the companies and lates were removed. I hit the BOA chat about 20 times and finally got someone to say "yes" and recently mailed the transcript to BOA. Nineteen "no's" followed by one "yes" is a win for us. Good luck!

Edited November 26, 2014 by barco

[jl326110]

Thanks to all for the replies. ICANHASMUNY - thanks for the additional reading. barco - that sounds like a great idea too. I think I'll try the letters first, if not I might get tricky with the transcript.

 

I appreciate any more replies - but glad to hear I'm not way off. All thanks to the resources on the forum.

Edited November 26, 2014 by jl326110

[jl326110]

Update -

 

I thought it would be helpful to post an update on my progress to serve as a running diary and a resource for future newbies looking for guidance.

 

1. Phone call to remove old/inaccurate addresses for Equiifax and Transunion worked great. It was a quick phone call and resolved in under 2 minutes. For Experian - they will not remove any old addresses! They stated they are required by law to include the address if I ever lived there. So, we went one by one and removed the ones that were obviously wrong (wrong house number, street name mixed up, etc). They did remove all my phone numbers no questions asked. I plan to call again and state the other agencies removed with no issues so I am confused how this could be requirement by law.

 

2. I decided to call my credit card companies and open accounts just to confirm they are reporting the right name/address on their system. I did have one or two that had our names wrong or abbreviated. I also requested new cards just to have them nice and shiny. Maybe it was a mental thing but it felt good to contact them and confirm things are accurate.

 

3. I am in for the long-haul for removing negatives from my account. First attempt for a goodwill adjustment for my 30 day lates all were declined. I'm reading through the forums for other ideas and plan to keep attacking this until I can make some kind of progress. I plan to just remove the 30 day lates if I can and leave my other closed accounts in good standing.

 

4. Paying off credit card debt - Wife and I are getting in a really good system for budgeting. We're using a phone app to track our extra expenses (groceries/lunch/fun and weekend budgets). Just visually tracking it through a budget and NOT the bank account has been a huge shift in thinking that has resulted in immediate savings that we can put into our CC's. So now we don't look at our bank and see "$2000 available" we look at our fun budget and see we have "$200" to spend. Really can't recommend this enough.

 

5. Opening positive accounts - we're waiting until we make progress we our CC debt and hope to pay everything off in about 6 months. Once done and (hopefully our score will be much better) we will apply for secured credit cards and possibly another one or two recommended cards from the forums. I also want to check our APR% on each of the cards and see if I am paying too much or can negotiate better (or just stop using those high % cards if all else fails).

 

That's all! Hope to have another update with progress on the goodwill adjustments in a few weeks.

 

- J

[nht]

J, you may find this thread useful:

 

The MASTER how to delete old addresses From Experian

[mizliz1011]

Just my advice, if you are looking for a GW delete of a 30 day, give them a good reason.. not just you screwed up. If there was illness in the family, you were out of the country, out of town on business for longer than expected, wrote a check that was lost in mail... not just hey, forgive me. give them a reason to forgive, which is much easier if there is just ONE..per creditor.

[jl326110]

Diary Update (lol) - Hope future newbies find this history helpful:

 

1. Attacking our CC debt is going great. Can't speak highly enough about both of us being on board with a budget/system. We've paid off all but 3 credit cards (started with 17). We went with the snowball method, so these last 3 actually have the highest balances. We've paid $20k off and are right around $12k left. Snowball was great - it reduced our monthly commitment for minimum payments and was a huge mental boost with each account that was paid off. Once we pay off these last 3 cards I am going to resume asking for Goodwill adjustments to clean up any late payments I can. After that our credit report should be in pretty good shape.

 

2. Goodwill adjustment letters show up as "disputes" on my credit report which seems like is a big no-no for applying for a mortgage. I didn't realize these would be disputed - I thought it would be a yes/no answer on the adjustment. Currently researching what a dispute means and if it truly is just a simple call to close the dispute on my end.

 

3. My wife and I decided to reach out to a broker and see our mortgage options. Realistically we are still at least 6 months out from buying a house. We thought it would be good to understand the process and go through the steps in case it takes a few months. One good thing that came from this immediately was learning that we have open disputes mentioned above. We're hoping we can use this as a starting point - see how much we can get approved for / understand the fees / money required - and use that as a guide for 6 months+ when we feel really confident moving out.

 

4. From the broker, we learned our credit scores are actually much lower than what Credit Karma estimates. Credit Karma shows 702 for my wife, and 680 for me. In reality we are at 619 and 612, respectively. I was surprised to find that out. I'm going to look into a more accurate way to track this. Was a little bit of a mental blow... it almost feels like we dropped 80 points on our score. I'd like to find out what's affecting my score that Credit Karma is missing - or maybe it hasn't been updated recently since our overall debt/balance ratio has changed so much in the last 2-3 months? How long do these reporting agencies take to update?

 

5. We are on track with our goals of no CC debt by June and a fully funded Emergency account by Oct this year. Going great!

 

Thanks for reading, good luck to all.

Edited February 25, 2015 by jl326110

[jl326110]

Hi all,

 

Final Update

 

Our first post on CB was on 11/25/2014 where my credit score was hovering in the mid 500’s and I had 30k in credit card debt over my head.

 

Our previous post was 02/24/2015 where we did make some progress – credit score up to 619 and 20k credit card debt down (out of about 32k overall).

 

As of this week, my FICO score is reporting 740 for me and 702 for my wife and we have a total of $200 credit card debt (just celebrated last weekend with a nice dinner).

 

I wish we could say there was a magic system or call that made our credit score jump. But (at least for us) it was really a lifestyle change: being aware of how to use credit and keeping a budget. On the first point- once I made the initial recommendations (pulled credit reports, removed inaccuracies, ask for goodwill adjustments, etc) there wasn’t much else to do other than monitor our reports and keep it at the forefront of our minds. We didn’t call the credit card companies every week, we didn’t send letters repeatedly… so on that effort, I was very surprised how much easier it was to maintain if we just CONTROLLED our spending.

 

As for the budget, that was the key for us. We stopped our unplanned spending and using cards for every transaction. We kept a budget and attacked our debt with every single dollar we had available. Luckily we have a good income and we were able to pay off 32k of credit card debt in under a year. We did move in with my mom and cut back on a lot, but it was hardly as an impossible task as it seemed to be.

 

We’re not out of the woods yet. We are a little behind on our savings, and I do still have 80k in student loan debt. I am planning to call all my credit accounts over the next few weeks and ask for credit line increases. Just yesterday I applied online and increased my available limits $6k total. I’m hoping that the overall balance/limit ratio will further drive my score up. We’re also planning for the next 12 months – to boost our savings so we have a decently sized emergency fund. Then starts the longer journey to pay off student loan debt.

 

We did decide to apply for a mortgage before paying off our student loans. We’re hoping we can find a modest house that will be close to our current rent payment. I’m still researching our options there.

 

If I can leave others with any advice is:

 

1) Have a budget and keep it. Use tools out there – YNAB, Mint, Every Dollar, Excel.. whatever. Know where your money is going and put it to work.

2) If married - bills/credit/spending should be a joint effort. For me, I used to do all the bills. It wasn’t until my wife was 100% on board that we cut our spending, looked at our budget for spending (and not how much $$$ is in the bank), and PLANNED is when we saw a difference.

3) Join a forum, read financial/credit posts, books, podcasts, clubs... whatever. Keep your head thinking about your finances and it will be easier to make it a priority. Just reading through CB and keeping my mind engaged on the topic over the past 10 months really helped me stay interested long term.

4) Don’t be discouraged by slow progress. For me especially with my student loans, it sometimes feels like I haven’t even cracked the surface. But I’m in a better place than I was 10 months ago, and I know it’ll be even better in another 10. Even slow progress is progress. My wife and I realize we are lucky to both have stable jobs this past year and were able to pay off the debt relatively quickly. But even if we didn’t have the funds, the principles remain the same.

5) Finally, read CB and follow the advice! There are people much smarter than me with more experience and knowledge. I just hope this thread shows a real-world example of someone who started with absolutely zero credit tracking knowledge and no plan. We’re not done yet but we’re still working at it. If I can make the progress I’ve made in 10 months you better believe you can, too.

 

Thanks again to all the people on the forum - who take the time to add content, give advice and maintain the site. Good luck to everyone out there!

[cv91915]

That's a really great update. Congratulations on making the foundational changes necessary to your financial habits to turn your situation around. You are in a much more powerful place.

 

Please don't make this your final update (or at least not your final post here). Stay and help, and encourage others who need a nudge from someone who has been there.

[Clouds]

Agreed! You've done so many things right (not least of which is NOT rushing around trying to buy a house or apply for a bunch of premium cards with your scores in the toilet and loads of debt)--very inspirational. Nearly 200 points in less than a year! Well done!

 

(Just musing on the contrast between this post and another I just read where the OP was all bent outta shape that s/he ONLY got a $200 increase on a $300 card...)

[dcowboy08]

Awesome. Love seeing this kind of success.

[Treetop46]

I am a newbie and I need help

[cv91915]

I am a newbie and I need help

 

Start a new thread and tell us how we can help.

[creditxpert]

congrats OP, Truely inspirational!

[creditxpert]

Use paid copies of your reports. The free annual reports give the CRAs 45 days instead of 30 to complete disputes.

This is new to me. I always just knew of annualreports.com, where can I go purchase my reports from? Are you speaking of myfico?

[VintageWillow]

 

Use paid copies of your reports. The free annual reports give the CRAs 45 days instead of 30 to complete disputes.

This is new to me. I always just knew of annualreports.com, where can I go purchase my reports from? Are you speaking of myfico?

 

You can call each of the CRAs to request them. The numbers are: EQ - 800-997-2493, EX - 888-397-3742 and TU - 800-888-4213. The numbers are automated so no need to wait for business hours.