Dizzll 0 Posted July 25, 2014 Report Share Posted July 25, 2014 Hello all, been reading hundreds of posts from this forum and it has been inspirational as well as educational. I am in need of some specific advice however. I have been pretty bad over the years with collections and finance. I even had a chapter 7 bankruptcy back in 2005. Well I have had a good job for 5 years now ($90,000 a year). Still wasn't th ebest at paying stupid things however. For instance I have broken leases, broken cell phone contracts, medical bills etc I had not paid. Well as of last month I have paid every debt I have other than my car payment. My scores last month were 500, 570, 580. After paying $10,000 of debt and collections my scores are 510, 576, 590 respectively. I really want to buy a house using my VA loan and no one will help me until I hit at least 580. My question is, what can be done to raise my score? I even opened a secured credit card. I gained less than 10 points by paying $10,000? What a joke. I am so frustrated and regret even paying. So what can I do? Please help! Sorry for long post and thank you so much for your time to respond... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Clydesmom 1,207 Posted July 25, 2014 Report Share Posted July 25, 2014 Paying accounts initially hurts your credit score. I would have done Pay for Delete but that is water under the bridge now. However, all may not be lost. Since you did pay off the debts I would start sending goodwill letters asking them to delete the trade lines. Good will letters is likely to get a bigger improvement if you can them to remove the TL. Someone else may have some other suggestions. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
willingtocope 1,336 Posted July 25, 2014 Report Share Posted July 25, 2014 What scores are you looking at? FAKO scores are useless. The only FICO scores we are allowed to see are FICO Consumer Scores. What you need to see are FICO Mortgage Scores. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dizzll 0 Posted July 25, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2014 Those scores were given to me by a mortgage company as my mortgage fico scores... II will send goodwill letters out. I requested deletes at time o fpayments but everyone refused... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
willingtocope 1,336 Posted July 25, 2014 Report Share Posted July 25, 2014 Assuming that was an actual lender (as opposed to a mortgage broker) then the scores are probably accurate. Goodwill letters might help. The only other thing to do is wait. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
lionhunter 78 Posted July 28, 2014 Report Share Posted July 28, 2014 @Dizzll - you mentioned you paid off a lot of debt. Did all of these accounts show "paid as agreed" or "paid in full" or "paid settled"? Each one of these can affect your credit score differently. Are there other negatives on your reports that you can try to get taken off? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
GenXwire 2 Posted August 8, 2014 Report Share Posted August 8, 2014 for a mortgage ... even with FICO 9 (Mortgage companies won't use it for years and years) paying off old debt re-ages the account and actually decreases your score. It's is literally the worst thing you could have done short term, unless you had them stipulate they would cease reporting on the account, or agree to remove the negative line item on your credit report once you pay them. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
