jamstigator

Okay, I gotcha. Yes, after 9 years all my reports are clean. Never had a judgment against me. So, yep, looks like I'm home free now! And I did learn enough from my mistakes of the past to not repeat them in the future. The biggest mistake was counting on income, then charging stuff, then losing the income. Now, I'm a pay-as-I-go guy, unless there's some weird emergency. If I don't have the liquid assets available to afford something, I simply don't buy it until I do.

In 1998 I had some serious financial difficulties, and defaulted on a car payment (which resulted in a repossession). I was also buried in credit card debt, to the tune of around twenty grand, and I defaulted on that too. I also owed on my student loan, from the 80s, and I defaulted on that too. Pretty bad situation, so far as credit rating is concerned. Well, in the mid 90s, I answered a call from a collection agency trying to collect on the student loan. The guy on the phone tried some heavy duty intimidation. The conversation went something like this: Collector: "We can and will have your wages garnished." Me: "I'm paid in cash only, no paychecks to garnish." Collector: "We can freeze your bank accounts." Me: "Feel free, I think I have 4 dollars in one account." Collector: "We can take your home and car." Me: "I don't have a home, or a car, or a motorcycle, or even a bicycle, and no assets except the clothes on my back." Collector: "Uhhhh...." Me: "However, I *want* to pay the student loan off, so I'll tell *you* what I will pay, and you'll accept it, because obviously you can't threaten me; you can't take anything from a man with nothing." Collector: "Okay, what are you willing to pay us?" So, I started paying that off, to the collection agency. After a couple of years, they transferred me to Sallie Mae and I kept paying until that debt was gone. That looks awesome on my report now too, just years and years of timely payments on my student loan. I may have screwed everything else up, but I made good on that one. Still, I was sure my credit was like perma-screwed, so I just didn't use any credit from 1998 until 2007. Last year, I figured, okay, let's see what it looks like now that the student loan is paid off. And, much to my surprise, my score was 768. My significant other was fairly awestruck too. (Her score is always around or above 800 -- she's a financial master.) Seeing that sheer passage of time had restored me so hugely, I went ahead and applied for a half dozen platinum cards last September, to see if I could make my score go even higher, and try to match the woman's. I got all the cards I applied for, which told me that 768 must be pretty nice. The woman has cards with $30,000 limits (!), but the cards I got totalled (all six of them) $25,000. So all six of my cards aren't as good as *one* of my woman's cards. But I didn't care, because I didn't get the cards to use them, just to try to crack 800. Unfortunately, I didn't realize those six inquiries would drag my score down, but it did. It went up a little at first, to 782, then dropped down to 742 when the inquiries all showed up. As a test, I applied for a Crapital One auto loan, and they immediately approved me for a $16,498 blank check to buy a car. Still have that check, but haven't used it. I don't really need a car; I was mainly curious as to whether I'd be approved for one at all after having my previous car repossessed. But I guess that high credit score makes stuff happen. Also, I got that car loan and all those platinum cards without ever having to prove my income (e.g. my ability to repay what I borrow). Could I repay that car loan if I use it? Yeah, probably, although it'd be tight at this point. I'm sure a car loan paid in timely fashion would help me yet more, but I want to be *sure* I can repay it, and I'm not to that point yet, so I'm going to wait a year or two. I do still get a couple of tenacious collectors sending me mail trying to collect. They don't call anymore, because the phone is in the woman's name and she told them if they continue to call her, she'll file a police report for harassment. The statute of limitations is long past on the (1998-ish credit card) debt that they are trying to collect on anyway, so I'm not really worried about them anymore. So, that's where I'm at now. Way better off than I was in the late 90s! I used no tactics, filed nothing with anyone, talked to no one about anything, just kinda laid low and let time pass and that seemed to fix everything, to an extent I had not even imagined.

Isn't the statute of limitations based on the last activity/payment on the account? If so, then wouldn't making a payment to the CA count as such a payment? Either way, I'm not going to pay them anything, since it's past the SoL and I'm not capable of paying what they want anyway. I thought the 90% off offer was their tricky way of getting me to make a payment on an SoL'd account, so that they could then immediately turn around and try to serve me to collect on the other 90 percent.

No kidding, just one year for inquiries? Yay! Two years seemed like an awfully long time to wait for that, although I was prepared to do it. But one year, that's much more palatable!

I'm probably a bit unusual, in that I have only ever had one car loan, and that car was repossessed in the late 90s. And I am 43 years old. Also in the 90s, I racked up about $20,000 in credit card debt, which I never repaid. Once the credit cards went to collection agencies, I was scared to make a payment, because that would re-age the account, so I just avoided the collection agencies for the last 9 years. The one thing I did pay off, and it took a goodly while too, was my student loan. I don't think even a bankruptcy gets you out of paying a student loan. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) During all those years, I just figured my credit score was trashed, and never bothered to check it. I sort of wish I had, because I'd like to see what a really horrible score/report looks like, but I didn't until last year. When I looked last year, my score was 768. I was like, holy moly, that's awesome! I read that it helps improve your score if you have a good ratio of used-to-unused credit, and I had basically no credit at all, and yet my score was 768. So I applied for a pile of nice platinum cards, an even half-dozen, with a total available balance of around $25,000. I haven't used any of them, and may not ever use them. I got them just to see if they'd eventually push that score up over 800, but I have to wait for the inquiries to scroll off now (should be gone in late 2009), then I can reassess and see what my score is. During these past 9 years I never talked to any collection agency. I had the woman answer the phone and if we didn't recognize the number, she just said she'd never heard of me, and she'd tell them to stop calling or she'd report them for harassment. Since the phone's in her name, and we aren't married (though we've been together 19 years now), they mostly did stop calling. A couple of collection agencies (Palisades and Cavalry) still occasionally send collection attempts in the mail (despite the fact that the SoL on those debts is now long, long past). The last one (received today) offered me 90% off, if I'd make a one-time payment of $1950-ish. But since the SoL is long past due, and since paying them *anything* would re-age the account and make me vulnerable to further collection efforts, there's no chance in hell that they're getting anything from me. Besides, *not* paying anyone anything and *not* talking to anyone got my score from crap to almost 800 -- why mess with what works? Heh.

My 'debt-repair strategy' was pretty simple: I waited a while, and everything scrolled off and went past the SoL. That alone got me from probably one of the worst credit ratings in history to 768. Once it was that high, I got a pile of platinum cards, and now I'm just waiting for the inquiries to scroll off and hoping for 800+ sometime around the end of 2009. I wouldn't trust Kevin Trudeau with...well, anything. He preys on the weak and the uneducated and the hopeful. There's *plenty* of information available about credit repair, on this site and others, that there's no need for a book. Plus, changes in the laws won't get automatically updated in any book, whereas the net will keep you updated if anything changes. And websites like this are interactive -- ask a question, get an answer, often quite quickly. Ask a book a question, and you just look crazy. One of the most immoral things I've ever seen is Trudeau selling his remedies for curing cancer and the like. He gets people who are very likely *dying* to throw some of their final few dollars in his direction, in the hopes that his 'cures' will save them. That's like seeing a drowning man and telling him you'll throw him a line for $29.95. Then when he pays you, you throw him both ends of the line and laugh as he dies, then head to the bank and cash his check. I mean, c'mon, that's so far from an ethical deed that it's *evil*, milking money from the dying. If there's a Hell, I'm sure there's a very special spot saved just for Mr. Trudeau.

I *royally* screwed up my credit during a bad financial period at the end of the 90s. I mean bad. I still have a couple of collectors trying to collect from me, despite the fact that the SoL expired long ago. I could probably just answer the phone and make them go away, but they're easy to ignore, and I figure this keeps costing them money, so meh. I decided to check my score a few months ago, and wow, it was 768. I was shocked! I really did absolutely nothing to help it recover from my 90s disasters, just let time pass. To boost the amount of unused credit showing on my reports, I applied for, and got, six platinum credit cards with decent interest rates and hefty limits, about $25,000 all total in available credit on the six cards. I haven't used them, and may never; I got them just to boost my score, basically. After getting the cards, my score jumped to 782, then all the inquiries hit and it dropped to 740-ish, which is where it's at now. But it seems to me that if I'm just patient and wait for the inquiries to scroll off (another 20 months or so I guess), then I should be golden (or platinum, heh). If I was at 768 *before* getting the platinum cards, I am at least hopeful that when the inquiries scroll off, it will pass 800. I find it interesting that the simple passing of time can repair credit as bad as mine must have been at the turn of the millenium.