Hello to you as well and thank you for the welcome.
I am trying to do a bit of both, as my credit history is limited and I also had a not so good run with my first credit card when I was 18. It was a Capital One unsecured card and it was my very first. Needless to say that I was inexperienced and didn’t handle it well at all. It was closed and eventually charged off but was dropped from my credit report at the beginning of this year.
So I started over with the secured card in May, it didn’t start reporting/wasn’t officially opened until June. I’ve been following the reviews religiously and was so happy when I found this blog’s entry on the Capital One card. I was constantly coming back to read the comments and I still do so, but now I read the forums as well.
I had to put down the full 200.00 for the deposit and I recently sent in an additional 200.00 to increase my limit to 400.00. I am currently waiting for my new balance to show on my account, which should happen by this Thursday. I plan on increasing my limit periodically.
As for managing the account, I’ve educated myself now and try to spend as little as possible on it. There have been some emergencies and unexpected events that made me spend more than what I designated as my own personal limit but I always pay the balance in full. There was only one month that I couldn’t pay the balance in full, but I still made my payment, and thus I had to pay interest. I don’t plan on having that happen again.
However, I’m thinking that I need another secured card to help me out since all the reports I’ve viewed keep telling me that A.) my account history is too short, B.) I have too little revolving accounts and C.) my credit limit is too low. I can’t risk shopping around and putting in applications because I don’t want any more inquiries on my report. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll increase my current limit when I can and keep paying it on time.
My utilization is currently reporting at eleven percent, which makes me so happy, since it reported last time at eighty-three percent due to unexpected expenses popping up and me not being able to get the balance down in time.
I have three collections on my report, totaling 126.00 and I know that is negatively impacting my score. I don’t really know how to handle collections, unfortunately. I could just pay them off, but would that make them be deleted from my report entirely? Can collection balances be transferred to a credit card? I don’t know much about how transferring balances works either. Obviously I still have much credit education to do.
As for the collections, according to my Experian report, one should be dropping off the record next month and another in January of 2012. The last one won’t be falling off until December 2013. So do you have any advice for how to handle those pesky collections?
They’re the only thing that is on my report, other than the secured card and once they’re gone, I can say goodbye to that “potentially negative” section of my credit report. And hopefully for good.
Strange enough though, my Equifax report only shows one of the collections on it. The one it does show is the one that my Experian reports says will be on record until next month.
Whew, sorry for being so long-winded. I don’t really have anyone to go to for credit advice, so I guess I wanted someone to share with. In closing, I’ll share my scores. I’ve checked all of my credit scores for this month and they’re reporting as follows:
Transunion – 654
Equifax – 621
Experian – 614
And they all put me in the D grade level. Naturally, I would like to improve them all and get as far away from the D as possible. But in my defense, I did start off in the F level, so that D isn’t looking too bad after all.