Sorry for being so dumb but the idea of opening a new credit card improving my credit score goes against EVERYTHING I've ever heard/know about credit. Here's my issue...I have 3-4 inqs, most over a year ago, on each of the big three CB's. My scores are from 620 to 720 (from each site...NOT true FICO's). I'm reading here, if I understand correctly, that opening new CC accounts, secured or not, can improve my score. I'm looking to purchase a house soon (hopefully) as I was recently relocated by my employer. Haven't sold my other house yet. I have five settled CO's and one unsettled with the OC. There's a JDB lurking on that remaining unsettled that we have a serious disagreement over.
I would like to get my scores up ASAP but I'm not having much luck. The CO's date back three years ago and the settlements made almost a year ago. Am I understanding correctly that new CC's may help this situation? I've read the 1 - 2 Punch method but not sure if I understand it fully.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Welcome to CreditBoards! We hope that you find what you're looking for here.
Some helpful tips:
Again, welcome to the CreditBoards family!
: LKH, Pam, radi8, breeze
: CargoJon, Chris in OK, cotterpin, CramItCCCAs, Fallon, MarvBear, CtSoxFan, pryan67, psp, Stryker, TrevorHere
: brazen, Brian B The Loan Professor, cedski, DallasLoanGuy, hoapres, ICANHASMUNY?, Lighthouse84, Linx04, TeeSharice
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My guess is you will have better results from cleaning up baddies than opening new credit unless you think a new line could severly reduce your utilization if you are carrying balances.
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
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Generally, opening a new CC helps a lot if you don't have any CCs at all. Opening a second helps significantly and opening a third may or may not help. This is for people with low util. It's quite possible if your util is high that a new CC will lower your score. Also, baddies reduce but don't eliminate the effect and baddies have by far the most negative effect on FICO credit scores.
Once you have 4 or more cards additional cards will usually drop your score for 1 to 6 months.
But it's highly variable so YMMV.
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
Can you pay before the statement cuts? If not, you may consider letting low utilization report the month that you plan to apply for the mortgage.
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50% of credit repair is adding new tradelines.
if you had more than one card your overall utilization would improve and this would probably greatly improve your FICO scores given the importance of utilization.
you mentioned inquiries so let me add that inquiries over 12 months old do not affect FICO scores.
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
If you are going to buy a house soon, I assume you have some savings. Why not pay your bills by some other method next month and only put 10% on the card and PIF?
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Is this also true for secured credit cards? Is the 1 - 2 Punch a good option for me?
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
Who is the creditor that card is from? Since you've had it for a while you might be able to get a CLI without a hard INQ this would help how your Util looks on your report and not cause the point drop from a hard inq. However some creditors don't like to give CLI's without Hards, so it will totally depending on specifically what creditor it is.
Being that you settled several of the collection accounts a while ago, its possible if you can find anything wrong with how they are reporting a Jack Attack or even a simple dispute might cause those to fall off. (Some folks have had luck with paid collections falling off after waiting a few years and then disputing because the CA does not exist anymore, they don't still have records, they don't bother to respond because the account is paid, etc.)
You say you've tried everything, but what have you tried specifically? Besides paying them off (which usally hurts more than it helps as stupid as that is..) and general disputes which often time are not successful if they can match any info from the trade line to you which is not super hard to do.
How soon are you looking to make this home purchase? 0-6 months? 6-12 months? 12+ months? This will greatly depend on what makes most sense but regardless getting baddies removed will help!
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
Who is the creditor that card is from? Since you've had it for a while you might be able to get a CLI without a hard INQ this would help how your Util looks on your report and not cause the point drop from a hard inq. However some creditors don't like to give CLI's without Hards, so it will totally depending on specifically what creditor it is.
Being that you settled several of the collection accounts a while ago, its possible if you can find anything wrong with how they are reporting a Jack Attack or even a simple dispute might cause those to fall off. (Some folks have had luck with paid collections falling off after waiting a few years and then disputing because the CA does not exist anymore, they don't still have records, they don't bother to respond because the account is paid, etc.)
You say you've tried everything, but what have you tried specifically? Besides paying them off (which usally hurts more than it helps as stupid as that is..) and general disputes which often time are not successful if they can match any info from the trade line to you which is not super hard to do.
How soon are you looking to make this home purchase? 0-6 months? 6-12 months? 12+ months? This will greatly depend on what makes most sense but regardless getting baddies removed will help!
We had hoped to purchase within the next couple of months but as I said, I have a house that I'm trying to sell. It looks as if I may walk away from that empty handed, at best. I don't know how much cash in had I'll have at that point depending on how bad I get hit.
The good news is, once I sell it won't take long to build cash. If not for the house and rent plus additional costs at the house (power, lawn maintenance, insurance, etc.) we'd be able to squirrel away around $2000/month. That will quickly add up to a nice down payment. But, that all hinges on the sale of the house. I just want to be strategically positioned once the house does sell to get something right away and credit repair is the first part of that plan.
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
If you are going to buy a house soon, I assume you have some savings. Why not pay your bills by some other method next month and only put 10% on the card and PIF?
1) If you only have one credit card and you are letting it report with a high balance on the statement date, that is hurting you a lot and you can likely raise your score by paying the card down before the statement date so it reports a balance of something like $10.
2) The bad things on your credit report, especially if they are being updated monthly, can be an anchor that prevents your scores from going past a certain point. If they have not been updated in several years then the effect lessens.
3) You say you want to apply for a mortgage soon, how soon is soon in months? You usually don't want to apply for a bunch of other stuff right before you apply for a mortgage. The people on the mortgage forum can give you advice on that.
It sounds like the biggest impact you can have on your score in the next month is to pay down your card before the statement date so it reports with a tiny balance or zero balance. You could try it one month with reporting zero balance since some of the baddies might be counting in your utilization also. So maybe just pay your one credit card off, let it report with a zero balance, and see what your FICO score is under that condition.
You can try different scenarios with a FICO score estimator here:
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
Who is the creditor that card is from? Since you've had it for a while you might be able to get a CLI without a hard INQ this would help how your Util looks on your report and not cause the point drop from a hard inq. However some creditors don't like to give CLI's without Hards, so it will totally depending on specifically what creditor it is.
Being that you settled several of the collection accounts a while ago, its possible if you can find anything wrong with how they are reporting a Jack Attack or even a simple dispute might cause those to fall off. (Some folks have had luck with paid collections falling off after waiting a few years and then disputing because the CA does not exist anymore, they don't still have records, they don't bother to respond because the account is paid, etc.)
You say you've tried everything, but what have you tried specifically? Besides paying them off (which usally hurts more than it helps as stupid as that is..) and general disputes which often time are not successful if they can match any info from the trade line to you which is not super hard to do.
How soon are you looking to make this home purchase? 0-6 months? 6-12 months? 12+ months? This will greatly depend on what makes most sense but regardless getting baddies removed will help!
We had hoped to purchase within the next couple of months but as I said, I have a house that I'm trying to sell. It looks as if I may walk away from that empty handed, at best. I don't know how much cash in had I'll have at that point depending on how bad I get hit.
The good news is, once I sell it won't take long to build cash. If not for the house and rent plus additional costs at the house (power, lawn maintenance, insurance, etc.) we'd be able to squirrel away around $2000/month. That will quickly add up to a nice down payment. But, that all hinges on the sale of the house. I just want to be strategically positioned once the house does sell to get something right away and credit repair is the first part of that plan.
Okay, then yeah, I think it would be helpful to get two other open revolving tradelines so you have three open credit cards. It sounds like by the time you are in a position to apply for another mortgage the new cards will then be at least six months old.
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Therein lies the problem. I think I've done all I can do to clean up the baddies. They don't want to budge now and the scores have been stagnant for nearly eight months. I have one card now that I've had for several years. The limit is only $1600 (by choice at the time I opened it) and it currently sits almost maxed out monthly because I use it to pay bills and then pay it off. Problem is, it always shows proportionally high balance, even though it routinely gets paid off. If I had a higher limit I could use it and wouldn't be anywhere near the max with my monthlies. I have an insanely debt-to-income ratio but I don't think that matters.
If you are going to buy a house soon, I assume you have some savings. Why not pay your bills by some other method next month and only put 10% on the card and PIF?
1) If you only have one credit card and you are letting it report with a high balance on the statement date, that is hurting you a lot and you can likely raise your score by paying the card down before the statement date so it reports a balance of something like $10.
2) The bad things on your credit report, especially if they are being updated monthly, can be an anchor that prevents your scores from going past a certain point. If they have not been updated in several years then the effect lessens.
3) You say you want to apply for a mortgage soon, how soon is soon in months? You usually don't want to apply for a bunch of other stuff right before you apply for a mortgage. The people on the mortgage forum can give you advice on that.
It sounds like the biggest impact you can have on your score in the next month is to pay down your card before the statement date so it reports with a tiny balance or zero balance. You could try it one month with reporting zero balance since some of the baddies might be counting in your utilization also. So maybe just pay your one credit card off, let it report with a zero balance, and see what your FICO score is under that condition.
You can try different scenarios with a FICO score estimator here:
+1 good plan.
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Check with your loan officer as soon as possible as I believe (at least when I purchased) they needed at least 3 active trade lines.