Looking for advice and direction…

Feb 172011
 

This is my first post on these forums.  I’m 30 years old and pretty serious at this point on rebuilding my credit.  At the moment, I am working on paying off three collection accts with Alliance one (traffic violation fines).  I am $700 away from being paid in full and currently three accounts with alliance one are reporting to experian (one that is reporting a balance).  I have one acct with a collection company for US bank reporting a balance of $1375 which has a status stating “This acct is scheduled to continue on record until feb 2012″.   Lastly, four other misc collection accts reporting to experian totalling $1657 all of which scheduled to continue on record until 2013 or later.  I have no car loans, mortgages or credit cards that are active.

 

After reading over posts for the past few days, it sounds like a lot of you here are knowledgable and could provide some insight on the best course of action for me.  I recently viewed my three scores low being around 490 and high being around 580. 

 

Can anyone tell me where to begin?  Soooo lost…

Paying down CC debt

Jan 222011
 

I have three credit cards that I am planning to pay down. As of todays date 1/21/11 they are 90% maxed out. Below are my plans.

 

Card one pay down to 20%.          1/24/11

Card two pay down to 50%   1/24/11

Card three slowly pay it down sending double the monthly payment.

 

I have a big worry that the lender on cards 1& 2 (same lender) will cut the avail credit in 1/2 or even more and put me in the same boat I am in now.

My credit scores shows me with a 90%+ maxed out credit at the moment.

 

I understand the goal is to pay these off which is no problem, but I would like to rebuild my credit and paying them down to bring up my score seems like a good plan.

I ran into this issue 16 months ago when the card companies cut the avail credit to where my balances were.

I have no late payments in years so that is a good point.


 


 

massive debts, charge-offs, and what to do about them?

Jan 082011
 

Hello this is Jordan. Long story short. I got into a slue of cc debt. My job was just going poorly and I was getting paid less and less at work. Then sadly, I  lost my job and the debt piled up on me. Now i have a ton of charged off debt. I thought about going to a debt consolidator, but i barely make enough to live on let alone pay off these debts. Right now I have supplemental security income  which is absolutely nothing. So  here’s some questions. First should i consider bankruptcy or just wait it out? Second, can the cc copanies hire CA after CA after CA, artificially increasing the time the item stays on my report? I have not too many assets so i really can’t be sued at the moment. I know this is probably the worst situation you guys have ever seen, but i’d like your comments.

Credit repair

Dec 092010
 

Hello,

 

My question is, I’m trying to get my credit scores up. at the moment I have Eq;589 , Tr” 610. Ex: 640, I have a lot of old negative accounts mostly 5 to 6 years old such as charge offs and collections. Should I pay those off or wait until they fall off the reports?

Direct Loan Starting Repayment, Switched Repayment Plan Problem

Dec 032010
 

So my direct loan is going into repayment in a week and I switch my repayment plan from standard to graduated to make my payments a little lower for the moment as I dont make as much money now as I will in the future.

 

The problem is that the amount due for this first month is still the amount due for the standard repayment plan even though elsewhere on the same page it says the new “graduated” repayment plan payment amount. Im assuming this will fix itself or do I have to make the first payment as the standard repayment amount for this particular payment and then from then on it will switch over to the new graduated repayment plan amount?

 

Any info, thanks.

Secured or unsecured credit card – best choice?

Sep 032010
 

Hello,

 

I’m in the process of trying to begin rebuilding my credit. I had a chapter 13 BK in April of ’08 and converted to chapter 7 this August. My current FICO is 624. I have no credit cards or loans of any kind at the moment. I’ve done a lot of research and believe the next step in rebuilding should be to get a credit card, use it, and pay it off monthly….I do not know if I would qualify for an unsecured card at this time. I know I could get a secured card, but I’d prefer unsecured if possible simply to prevent me from tying up money with the security deposit. I’m reluctant to apply for an unsecured card because I don’t want the inquiry to impact my score if I can’t get the card. My question is simply:

 

Do I chance applying for an unsecured card and hope my 624 gets it or is the safer bet the secured card? Does anyone have any thoughts / suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance for any advice,

~El T

Paying off student loans

Aug 202010
 

When you have several student loans to pay off, do you think it’s better to focus on the low interest ones first, or the highest interest ones?

 

In my case, 4 of my lowest balance student loans also have the lowest interest rates.  The other 6 are all at the same interest rate, 6.8%.

 

Should I focus on getting the higher balances down, since they are accumulating the most interest?  Or should I just try & get the little ones out of the way, so they’re not accumulating interest in the background?

 

I don’t want to consolidate right now, that’s not really the direction i’m going at the moment.  Other advice/suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Republicans are to blame?

Jul 142010
 

On the latest strings I noted that the Republicans were to blame for  the loss of unemployment extensions.  This was followed by Pelosi declaring that these benefits were the root of new jobs.  It is not possible, at the moment for, the Republicans (alone) to block anything as they do not have near enough votes to do so.  Secondly this was not just a unemployment extension.  Pelosi and Reid added some $38B to it,  money for local and state government so they could avoid cutting their budget as well as much more.  Stripped down to just an extension the bill likely would have passed with a caveat..where was the money to come from?  The Republicans and some moderate Democrats did not wish to add it to the national debt…they wanted to take it from monies still in last years stimulus package.  Not only did the Democrats refuse to do so they also chose to add all these other “benefits” to the national debt. 

 

And of course the Republicans are “in bed” with Wall Street.  But what was the party that proposed then got passed the stimulus package?  And where was that money going other than to the auto makers…Wall Street perhaps?  And how many of Obama’s advisors came from Wall Street…start with Geitner.

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