Trying to raise credit score by about 25 points

[WillingtoFight593]

Hello,

I have about $7500 in charged off debt with Chase, about $6000 in charged off debt with Bank of America, both of those charged off in summer 2019, and $4300 or so in arbitration with a JDB. I have a mortgage with no late payments ever, and another small line of credit with Capital One which is like $1000 and has never been late either. Unfortunately I had a silly $90 medical bill that ended up going to collections which got reported and I paid it off in full but it’s there. 
 

I really want to refinance my house so I can save up some money to clean my credit up if possible, but I need to bump my score by 25 to be able to refinance. Is there anything I can do with any of these situations that would boost my score by that much? I could settle the charged off debt but I don’t know if that does anything, I’ve read here that it doesn’t do much. I don’t have the money to pay them in full but could settle for maybe 25% on each with the OCs in this case. 
 

Anyone else have any other recommendations?

Thank you!

[admin]

@WillingtoFight593how much money do you have?  When you settle, it depends on how you negotiate your credit rating.  There is a right and wrong way.

[MeganHwood]

My Credit Journey - From 480(s) to High 600(s) in less than 6 months

The Title is correct! I brought my FICO Scores from the 480(s) to the high 600(s) in under 6 months! YES! It is possible to do!

 

Q.) That's crazy to believe, how did you do it?

A.) To be completely honest, it wasn't easy. It took A LOT of hard work, dedication, and long stressful nights but I was able to accomplish my end goal, which was to go from having bad credit to having good credit. The first thing I did to begin was I obtained my FREE Credit Reports from (annualcreditreport.com). Due to the current pandemic with COVID-19, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are allowing you to have access weekly to your free credit reports until June of 2021. So, I took advantage of this for the next steps of my credit rebuilding journey.      

 

After I had all three of my current credit reports in front of me, I started looking for anything that I did not recognize or anything that may have any errors. Almost immediately, I noticed that there were a couple of red flags or errors within all three of my credit reports. I followed the dispute process and was able to have 3 collections successfully removed from my credit reports. With those three removed, my FICO Scores raised around 30 points.

 

After this I still had 8 collection accounts remaining on my credit reports, most of them were actually several years old. Due to the age of the accounts, I realized that I could potentially contact the debt collection agencies and negotiate a lower settlement amount in exchange for them deleting the account from my credit reports. This is typically known as a (Pay for delete). Once I had verification in writing from the debt collection agencies stating that they would delete the accounts once the settlement had been paid, I took action and paid as agreed. Within about 3 weeks, I seen that six collections had been deleted from my credit reports as agreed. This made my FICO Scores raise around 90 points, give or take.

 

The total amount I would have paid for the six collection accounts, had I not negotiated a settlement, would have been over $7,000. The amount I actually paid with negotiating to pay the accounts off for less was actually only a small fraction of that, at $2,900. Yes, you read that correctly, I was able to pay for delete on those six collection accounts, totalling over $7,000 for just $2,900. That's the beauty of negotiating with a debt collector. Keep in mind, normally most people who have collections tend to typically avoid any contact at all with these people, so when you call and say ''Hey, I want to pay you, but can only afford a lower amount and I will agree to pay you the settlement if you agree to delete the account from my credit reports after payment'', 9 out of 10 times they will jump for joy and completely work with you and agree to your terms. You just have to have that courage to make that call, and have the extra cash set aside to do it with.

 

Now, I had two collection accounts remaining on my credit reports, these two accounts were actually old medical bills and with them being over 5 years old, I decided to just let them be and fade away after just two more years. So now that I had cleaned up my old credit mess, I knew that I needed to do more if I wanted to re-establish good credit history. So I decided to get two secured credit cards. I only placed a $300 deposit for each card, so that way I was able to afford to establish two seperate cards. After I did that, I opened a personal loan account with a company called Self. With Self, you pay a monthly payment of say $48 for 12 months, after you make your last payment they give you the total you borrowed, plus any interest it gained. To better explain this, basically when you open an account with Self, they approve you for the loan, the loan is placed into a CD (Savings Account), once you pay the loan off, you get that loan that was in the savings account plus any interest it earned while being in there. They have 12 month and 24 month terms that you can choose from and the best of all is they report to all three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion!

 

The next step I did was opened a CreditKarma Account (FREE) and started an account with FICO Premier  . This is an important step because I did not want all my hard work to be for nothing. With MyFico Premier, you get Credit Monitoring and monthly access to all three Credit Bureau Reports. This as very important to me because now that I understood how credit worked, I wanted to make sure that I had total control and access to my credit scores 24/7. It was also nice to have peace of mind knowing that my identity and credit were being monitored 24/7 with MyFico Premier.

 

Q.) Ok, so now you have read what I did, so how long did it take me to get to the high 600(s)?

A.) Actually, not as long as you would think. I started my journey in December , and I reached my goal point of 671 by Mid-March.

 

So to sum it up, it is possible to rebuild your credit, or to establish good credit history for those of you who don't have any credit. Credit is a very important part of our lives, and it's crazy how those three numbers can mean so much, and just how important those three FICO numbers are. I didn't have any experience with credit at all, my mother never used credit and I was never taught anything about it. So unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way. I did A LOT of extensive research to help me with rebuilding my credit, and I am very happy with my end result. Found a great company Team that helped remove a chapter 13 bankruptcy along the line which was the last of my issues.

Not particularly recommending but worth mentioning because my credit score has now been rising 9 points a week ever since working with CREDIT BOOST FOCUS. (@Creditbootfocus on facebook )

 

 I apologize for the lengthy post, I hope that this information has helped someone or maybe my story has given someone else the courage to being their credit rebuilding journey.

[LaneBlane]

Aside from your mortgage and the line of credit you have with Capital One, do you have any other accounts reporting as being in good standing?   If so, what is your credit-to-debt ratio?  The higher your credit-to-debt ratio is over the 30% mark, the more your score will be held down.