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The long road to credit recovery.

SunnyD

SunnyD

Belgian Waffler
(Warning: Blog)

Let's just say my financial history is littered with missteps for the last 15 years. Bad choices, unfortunate events, horrible luck, impeccable (horrid) timing. About 7 years ago, the sobering reality set in, and I realized I needed to get my head on straight. I never thought I'd see the day where I could get to where I'd be able to get a halfway decent credit card, let alone a car loan and a mortgage. Apparently, today I got there.

Just got off the phone with a credit analyst from FIA/BofA, and apparently I said all the right things. They just approved my application for a Bank of America Cash Rewards Card, other than the Costco Amex card I used to have, probably the best (and currently ONLY) "Rewards" card I've had. No annual fee, 12.99% APR, 1% cash back on everything, 2% back on groceries, 3% on gas. 10% bonus on rewards redeemed into my BofA bank account.

It's comforting to know I'm not quite as dumb as I used to be. One step closer to that Amex Black! (Not)
 
Grats OP. I got a shock early on in the reality of credit and how it can work for you or against you. At that time, I decided to do whatever I could to keep it on my side. It's lot's of work and I'm sure you can apprecaite that.

Glad you "made it"!
 
SunnyD said:
(Warning: Blog)

Let's just say my financial history is littered with missteps for the last 15 years. Bad choices, unfortunate events, horrible luck, impeccable (horrid) timing. About 7 years ago, the sobering reality set in, and I realized I needed to get my head on straight. I never thought I'd see the day where I could get to where I'd be able to get a halfway decent credit card, let alone a car loan and a mortgage. Apparently, today I got there.

Just got off the phone with a credit analyst from FIA/BofA, and apparently I said all the right things. They just approved my application for a Bank of America Cash Rewards Card, other than the Costco Amex card I used to have, probably the best (and currently ONLY) "Rewards" card I've had. No annual fee, 12.99% APR, 1% cash back on everything, 2% back on groceries, 3% on gas. 10% bonus on rewards redeemed into my BofA bank account.

It's comforting to know I'm not quite as dumb as I used to be. One step closer to that Amex Black! (Not)
Click to expand...

Nice man! I LOVE my costco AMEX card. It is seriously the best.

Now you can use the credit card companies to your advantage. Just make sure you pay it off every single month, and the card companies start paying YOU to use their card. I recently got 2 round trip tixs to NYC for free because I have great credit and use it wisely.

It is a great thing to have good credit. Its a shame people dont start building their credit and make good financial decisions at an earlier age.
 
Congrats. I don't have any experience with that personally, but I'm sure that it is incredibly frustrating.
 
Grats OP! Now, work on having 3 or 4 good tradelines reporting, and garden it. Its a good idea to monitor both your credit reports and your FICO.

For reports only, USAA is your best bet. You can pull all three reports daily for $12/mo.(anyone can join for credit monitoring). For FICOs, unless youre a member of a credit union that provides EX, youre out of luck. For EQ the only place is myfico.com, and for TU myfico only provides TU98, but most lenders now pull TU04 which is unavailable to the public. Everything else is a FAKO. There is no site that provides all 3.

Typically people might pull their FICO's at the start of their credit repair process, then maybe after everything is done, and once or twice a year to monitor.

That said, for the reasons I listed above, the only FICO worth monitoring is EQ, and you can use Scorewatch from myfico (10 day free trial, then $14.95/mo), and it will give you 2 EQ FICO's per year, and alert you to changes as they happen. I personally wouldnt buy any TU FICO score from myfico, again for the reasons I listed above, and EX is not available. USAA will give you 3 scores, but they are NOT FICO's, and could be up to 150 points different than your actual FICO one way or the other (Google "FICO vs FAKO" for more details if you'd like).

Anyway, congrats on your success!
 
"No annual fee, 12.99% APR, 1% cash back on everything, 2% back on groceries, 3% on gas. 10% bonus on rewards redeemed into my BofA bank account"

That's way better then a half way decent credit card. What's your score?

And congrats 🙂
 
I'm in the same boat. I pretty much ruined my credit in my teens. Bad checks, unpaid utilities, you name it. It's taken me over 10 years and a local bank that trusts me to even get to the point where I can get credit of any sort from outside banks or credit card companies. This year has been kind of a break over point though.

I don't think we impress upon our children how important good credit will be in their lives. He'll, I barely had any concept of money when I was so merrily pissing away my future. It doesn't surprise me at all that a lot of people never recover after a youth full of poor financial choices.
 
SunnyD said:
Just got off the phone with a credit analyst from FIA/BofA, and apparently I said all the right things.

They just approved my application for a Bank of America Cash Rewards Card, other than the Costco Amex card I used to have, probably the best (and currently ONLY) "Rewards" card I've had. No annual fee, 12.99% APR, 1% cash back on everything, 2% back on groceries, 3% on gas. 10% bonus on rewards redeemed into my BofA bank account.

It's comforting to know I'm not quite as dumb as I used to be. One step closer to that Amex Black! (Not)
Click to expand...

You just signed up with the 2nd worse banking company in the U.S. (Well Fargo being the worst) and think that was smart?

<Shakes head>
 
dmcowen674 said:
You just signed up with the 2nd worse banking company in the U.S. (Well Fargo being the worst) and think that was smart?

<Shakes head>
Click to expand...

Been banking with BofA since 2007, and other than the transaction ordering fiasco (which was clearly spelled out in their account terms by the way), I haven't had an issue with them. Sub-primes? You're blaming BofA for Countrywide's mess? In that respect I'm pretty sure City was far worse and more tangably responsible than BofA in that regard.

Besides, the card is issued by FIA anyway. So go away.
 
SunnyD said:
Been banking with BofA since 2007, and other than the transaction ordering fiasco (which was clearly spelled out in their account terms by the way), I haven't had an issue with them. Sub-primes? You're blaming BofA for Countrywide's mess? In that respect I'm pretty sure City was far worse and more tangably responsible than BofA in that regard.

Besides, the card is issued by FIA anyway. So go away.
Click to expand...

FIA is BofA btw. I don't disagree with you just letting you know.

I just prefer that I believe BofA has one of the best online and mobile sites/software.
 
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