Hey F-man
On a lighter side, sad to say, but we all have so much in common. But were changing it!
So getting to your comment about the secured loan. Perfect choice, open an account at a local Credit Union, you will get better service and rates than a government run, money robbing, explitive bank. I might have said it before too, just lazy to go back and look, work with the same personal manager, or relations manager. Working with one person will allow you to get strings pulled when one person see’s the changes and knows personally how much you want to change, and get your credit back on track.
So its pretty simple….I have a checking and savings at the CU. when I had the funds to cover(secure) a loan I just had them hold the $500 in savings. Every month after making the loan payment the CU would release $100 and a day later my savings account would show that I had a balance of lets say $500, and an available balance of $100. The next month again would be a $500, with an available balance of $200, until the end of the term. I did $500 for 5 months. my payments were 102.35 a month, $100 principle and 2.35 interest.
Just as with a secured credit card, your total loan amount is covered in-case of default, not what were going for but it should be an option for almost anyone to get approved. This is where the work with one person is the way to go, I just applied online and originally was denied. Went to the bank, sat down with my personal banker and discussed what I wanted to do, it was covered by my savings account, she had to clear it with the board of directors(underwriters) and it was approved.
Now to say if it help’d. I don’t know…lenders want to see long-term accounts(3+ years, at a minimum) with great payment history. 5 months on a $500 loan will probably not turn any heads and get me a rate on a new car, but I wanted to have as many good standing accounts percentage wise to out-weigh my remaining derogatory account. Right now I have only one derogatory account on my report, and two pay’s or paid as agrees. One of the factors listed on my creditInform is:
Listed Num. 1–
You paid 66% of your accounts on time (as of the last time each account was reported). Note that derogatory accounts that have been paid off do not count as being paid on time.
This lowers your score. Any history of late payments (including missed payments and derogatory payment statuses) is a negative factor. No reported history of payments on any account is also negative because lenders cannot tell whether you paid on time or were late. Some cases of late payments are worse than others. If you have not been late with any payments recently, lenders may think you are responsible and do not (or will no longer) miss payments. Lenders realize that many people occasionally pay late. Therefore, being late with a single payment is typically not as harmful as being late with two or more consecutive payments. Similarly, being late on many accounts is typically worse than being late on just one. Also, lenders may view late payments as a more serious problem if you have collection accounts or negative public records such as bankruptcies or court judgments. These types of credit records indicate a pattern of credit problems. Finally, it may not be as harmful to be late with your payments if the past due amounts are small, because lenders stand to lose less money if they remain unpaid.
I’m lazy…that was right from my summary…sorry so long. Eventually if you have enough satisfactory accounts listed on your credit file that number keeps going up. I haven’t found the magic number, as it will be different for each person, but would expect that 85 to 90 of your accounts paid on time will look better to lenders, and that factor eventually will not matter to your score.
Hopefully I answered your question about the credit union secured loan. Now, just get out there! and make it happen!
Get Ahead!