Current Situation & Next Steps

[fallencyi]

Ok, so after getting some great advice from the experts here, I am back to ask for a little more. I'm looking for some general advice as to what you think I should work on next. Sorry in advance for the long post but I want to lay everything out in one place.

 

My Current Situation:

Starting in 2006, my FICO scores were about 550 and I had plenty of bad things going on with my reports. Since then I have been lurking on credit boards, and I have been taking a long term approach and rebuilding. With the help of Credit boards 6 or so years later I have no baddies whatsoever on any of my reports (Thanks CBers). I still have a fairly large amount of consumer debt that I am comfortably working on paying down but am not yet debt Free & doubt I will be until late 2017 at this rate.

 

My FICO Scores are currently ~750 to 770 or so, My home and car loans are less than one year old, with great interest rates & I am comfortable with those exactly as they are.

 

Now I want to take a more proactive approach on maximizing my credit profile and take advantage of rewards in a systematic way.I just went through an App & CLI spree that will net me some hard inq's & some newer accounts (impacting my AAOA).

 

My Goals:

Goal One: Pay off my CC debt ($11k ) on PSECU & get rid of credit card debt and interest for good.

• I know this is a big number, but it's been going down, and I haven't added anything to it at all.
• I am comfortably Paying $500 a month (Over double the minimum) & adding any extra cash I get towards this.
• The interest bugs me and. I am considering opening a card with a BT offer but doubt I will have it paid off before the 1 year intro period.
• 9.9% is currently my lowest apr.

Goal Two, Earn Travel Rewards towards Vacation, Flights & Travel stuff. Take advantage of my work travel situation to get even more points:

• Opened a Chase Sapphire Preferred. All Travel Related spend will go on here (PIF Each month).
• Applied for a Chase Freedom, not instant approval. Called recon & got them to approve me by moving CL from an old Slate card & part of my CSP above to the new card (Approved $9,500). All monthly spend that isn't on the CSP will go here.
• I am now considering co-branded cards based on Konrad's advice in another thread, but our hotel stay & flight situation is fairly all over the board (Different chains & airlines depending on price) and I am also not sure I want a lot more cards to manage points on.
• I am not interested in M$ or things of that nature (Best of luck to those that are though. it makes for interesting reading, and I might change my mind later if it doesn't get shut down).

Goal Three: Continue to improve my FICO Scores In general & get out of paying fees & Interest. I also want to leverage my Higher limit cards into better & better cards & offers with an eventual Goal of 800 just because. I'm in No real hurry & don't mind taking inquiries or New accounts if it gets me to my other goals faster.

• I waited until my Car & Mortgage settled & reported & am now I'm currently working on the "Leverage" portion, hence the App sprees, CLI requests, etc...
• Wondering if closing some of the lower limit cards would help? I have cards with AF Just because they are my oldest cards.

My current Open accounts:

USAA World Mastercard opened 6/1/2011 CL $30,000.00, Just got a CLI from 13,200 to 30,000. My Highest to date. Used Phone App.

NFCU Cash Rewards Visa opened 6/1/2011 CL $25,000.00 Just requested a CLI. Pending Decision on CLI Request…

PSECU Visa opened 4/1/2011 CL$20,000.00 Balance: $11,500 My only card with a balance. Util is high, I'm working on it. Have not tried CLI here, should I?

Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa Opened 8/4/2015 CL $16,000.00 Just Opened this for Monthly Travel Spend.

Chase Freedom Visa opened 8/7/2015 CL $9,500.00 Opened this for other non travel spend.

American Express "Blue" opened 3/1/2008 CL $7,500.00

BofA Signature Visa Opened 3/1/2011 CL $5,000.00

BofA Gold Visa opened 6/1/2006 CL $1,000.00 0 $29 AF. Kind of want to close this, but it's My oldest Active card.

Capital one Quicksilver One Mastercard opened 5/1/2009 $1,000.00 0 This was just PC'ed from an older Cap1 Card, Will request a CLI once I get it.

Capital one Quicksilver Visa opened 6/1/2006 CL $750.00 This was PC'ed from an older Cap1 Card, Will request a CLI once I get it.

American Express Green Card opened 11/1/2008 $0.00 This has an AF, Not sure if I should close this or request a PC to something else, or what. I really don't use it, but it's one of my older cards.

Amazon Store Credit Opened 4/1/2010 $5,000.00 Just got a CLI up from $4,400

Paypal Credit opened 2/1/2010 $3,050.00

Dell Account opened 12/1/2006 CL $4,000.00

Edited August 12, 2015 by fallencyi

[fallencyi]

Update & shameless bump. Just logged into NFCU & saw a $50,000 CL waiting for me. Guess that CLI request was successful.

[cv91915]

Congrats on the CLI.

[fallencyi]

Thanks CV! I was frankly shocked that they doubled what was quite recently my highest CL. I love Navy Federal. I just wish their rewards on this card were slightly better. Oh well, I'll continue to use it as a prybar for higher limits on cards I intend to use.

 

Continuing to work on my other goals.

 

Goal One: Pay off my CC debt ($11k ) on PSECU & get rid of credit card debt and interest for good.

Just going to continue to pay as much as I can towards this & wait on the balance transfer until I have a better understanding of the most appropriate offers for my situation.

Decided to try YNAB for budgeting to see if I could squeeze more into paying down this debt & get a better handle on where my monthly spend is really going.

 

Goal Two, Earn Travel Rewards towards Vacation, Flights & Travel stuff. Take advantage of my work travel situation to get even more points:

Not much here yet, but our basic required monthly spend is going towards the 3 month rewards spend on the Freedom & CSP.

Got DW off of the debit card habit.

 

Goal Three: Continue to improve my FICO Scores In general & get out of paying fees & Interest. I also want to leverage my Higher limit cards into better & better cards & offers with an eventual Goal of 800 just because.

 

Because of the CLI success with NFCU & USAA, I went ahead and asked for CLI's on a couple of other tradelines. Was approved for $11,600 on my BofA signature visa, and Cap1 Went from $1,000 to $2,000

 

Here I am not sure if it was better to wait until some things reported, or to just get them out of the way & take the hit from any potential hard inquiries all at once.

Note to self: Don't be so impatient.

 

 

Signed up for CCT & worked the half off thing as recommended by No Preset Snark Limit. So I have recent Fico's at a reasonable cost: Ex 760, Tu 786, Eq 772.

[NoPresetSnarkLimit]

Wait until updated limits report before going for other CLI's

 

1. BOA will waive annual fee, don't close it.

2. Try to PC to a Better Balance Rewards, free money every quarter more than covers annual fee if not waived, don't close it.

3. They take forever to process a PC, be patient.

[Konrad2012]

Update & shameless bump. Just logged into NFCU & saw a $50,000 CL waiting for me. Guess that CLI request was successful.

CONGRATS!!!

[fallencyi]

Goal One: Pay off my CC debt ($11k ) on PSECU & get rid of credit card debt and interest for good.

Continuing to pay this down. BT'ed 5k of it to a 0% offer from CITI.

Goal Two, Earn Travel Rewards towards Vacation, Flights & Travel stuff. Take advantage of my work travel situation to get even more points:

Per advice here, waited till my CSP posted, and then did a mini app spree for specific cards with good sign up bonuses that I wanted. Added the following cards successfully:

United Explorer Plus 50k bonus miles offer, Approved for 24k

CITI Hhonnors card, 75k bonus points offer. Approved for 9.1k

Amex Blue Cash Everyday No sign up bonus, but I wanted another Amice, and this will supliment my cash back for everyday spend when the Freedom or CSP don't fit the bill better. Approved for 5k.

Also starting to dip my toes into the water on R$/M$, got My "Serve" and trying to find a good route that I trust. Just going to do enough R$/M$ to cover Minimum spend for Sign up bonueses. Taking this one slow.

Goal Three: Continue to improve my FICO Scores In general & get out of paying fees & Interest. I also want to leverage my Higher limit cards into better & better cards & offers with an eventual Goal of 800 just because.

Inq's & new Accounts dropped my EX FICO 08 to 762. Will have to wait a few days to see the TU&EQ impact. Not too bad considering the ammount of TL's I just added.

Not that it means much, but an interesting milestone for me, is I finally broke 200k in available revolving credit, I know this is small change to some people on here, but it feels good for me.

[sinobueno]

If you recall, what was the condition of your credit reports & scores when you originally apped NFCU?

[fallencyi]

One of the gem's of advice I've learned here is to work with hardcopy credit reports, and I keep files for a while, so I just looked at my files and:

 

I had 5 Negative tradelines, 3 Chargeoffs, One collection, & one 30 day late at that point.

My total open revolving credit was under 2,000.

I had fairly high utilization.

 

My fico's at the time were:

Trans Union 676

Equifax 665

EX 669

This was as of 3/15/2011, so you may want to check the Credit Pulls database for more recent history.

Edited September 7, 2015 by fallencyi

[fallencyi]

Update: Since starting to work on R$ side of things, I realize that I clearly have a problem staying in the garden & not apping for new stuff. Too many good sign up bonuses recently. I have added 6 New accounts 30 days. We'll see what this does to my AAOA once they post. Hopefully I don't draw any adverse action. FICO's after the inq's are still around the 770 Mark according to CCT.

 

Revolving Trade lines:

$50,000 NFCU Cash Rewards Visa (01-Jun-11)

$30,000 USAA World Mastercard (01-Jun-11)

$24,000 United Airlines Explorer (Chase) (02-Sep-15)

$20,000 PSECU Visa (01-Apr-11)

$16,000 Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa (03-Aug-15)

$11,600 BofA Signature Visa (01-Mar-11)

$10,400 CITI Diamond Preferred MC (30-Aug-15)

$10,000 USAA Amex (11-Sep-15)

$9,500 Chase Freedom Visa (07-Aug-15)

$9,100 CITI Hilton Hhonors (06-Sep-15)

$7,500 Amex Blue (01-Mar-08)

$5,000 Amex Blue Cash Everyday (06-Sep-15)

$2,000 Capital one Quicksilver One Mastercard (12-Aug-15)

$1,000 BofA Gold Visa (01-Jun-06)

$750 Capital one Quicksilver Visa (01-Jun-06)

$5,000 Amazon Store Credit (01-Apr-10)

$3,050 Paypal Credit (01-Feb-10)

$4,000 Dell Account (01-Dec-06)

Edited September 13, 2015 by fallencyi

[fallencyi]

Sorry to resurrect an ancient dead thread, but I wanted to post to say Thanks to the CB'ers that helped. I just paid off the last of my revolving debt & was successfully able to take the family to Hawaii on Points/miles earned from the Tips & information I learned here.

 

I've gone from being the kind of customer that prime banks shunned & predatory companies loved, to the kind of customer that Prime banks dislike,because I am taking value from their revenue stream instead of adding to their bottom line. It wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the help of many smart & kind people here.

 

All my goals from the thread above have been achieved. Time to set new goals (Trip to the Caribbean paid for by points maybe) . Thanks CreditBoards!

[mendelssohn]

Great update!!!

 

Congrats on your success!!!