Using my burner account out of embarrassment. This is my current score via credit karma, I’ve made some stupid mistakes in the past and unfortunately let my account with chase go to collections. Is there any way to fix this and bring my score back up?
On my mobile app it still shows I can enroll and pay less than the full balance but I’m not sure if that would be my best bet, so I am seeking solid advice on this.
I currently owe $4,800 to them, that is my only line of credit at this time.
What would be the best way to go about this? And what are some other things I can do to increase my score?
Just know there is no quick fix to credit, how to fix this is identifying the problem(s) that got you here in the first place, taking accountability to correct your spending habits, practicing self control, budgeting/saving, switching jobs with better pay or more hours, not borrowing what you cannot afford to pay back a lot of people are in the mindset that it's their money they're spending becuase of the ease of access to the money, you're spending the banks money, it's not yours.
From this point forward paying what you owe down to the minimum on time, every time and overtime your score will recover. You have a default that will stay on your credit profile until it falls off (7) years I believe.
It won't be impossible but this will make it very difficult for you to finance with banks and you will get shitty interest rates on top of that if you're approved for anything.
Lessoned leaned, this is your wake up call to get it together and keep it that way, life is hard enough and you're making it harder.
Lies he will recover fast, collections become less impactful as they age asking as they keep payments and debt down they will be in the high 600s in a year
I went from 780 to 580 due to over 40 late payments, and a couple charge offs. It took 2 years, but as of today my lowest FICO 8 is 701, and my highest is 720. Just pay your charge offs as soon as you can (try to settle for less than the full balance) and make all your payments on time moving forward, that's all you can do.
Don't use Credit Karma. They don't always show you the full picture of what's happening with your reports. Instead, pull your official reports from www.annualcreditreport.com. If the account was sent to collections, it's very likely the debt was charged-off. What Account Status and Payment Status is Chase reporting? If charged-off, is Chase reporting a balance owed?
Edit to add: The report from CK is dated August 5th. This has almost certainly charged-off.
On a related note, the score Credit Karma provides is mostly irrelevant. Nearly all creditors/lenders use FICO scores in lending decisions, so these are the scores you should monitor.
Credit Myth #1 - You only have one credit score.
You should use something else to check your credit. Vantage 3.0 is crap. If you pay the collection make sure they remove it since paying the collection will not increase your score but them removing it will. Good luck man.
The best thing you can do for your score is to keep making your payments going forward.
When I had a JPMorgan card that they closed on me, they refused to delete my negatives whatsoever. No Delete. It finally aged off last October and I'm pleased to see it gone, lol. But they kept it on the reports for the full time they could.
If you are being offered a settlement and you can afford it, then I'd take them up on it. The sooner that shows as paid, the sooner other creditors will look on you with a kind eye,
The farther in the past those skipped payments go, the less they'll matter. and when you get a new credit account, such as a secured card from Capital One, pay it off every single month without fail. The new payment history will start to matter more, eventually.
But don't be desperate and accept a terrible card, such as Credit One or Premier. Just wait.
Go read your reports at annualcreditreport.com and see what other negatives might be there, suppressing your score.
Are you in the US? If you are not in the US then no, it won't work.
The 3 places I said to see your FICO 8 score will have truncated reports, which are better than nothing.
creditwise.com has a truncated Transunion report and the FICO 8 score based on it.
experian.com has a truncated Experian report and the FICO 8 score based on it.
FREE account at myfico.com has a truncated Equifax report and the FICO 8 based on it.
If you are not in the US, I do not know if those links work.
I saw that you asked about getting 3 kinds of reports.... there's really only one kind of report.
Each of the credit bureaus compiles and puts out a report on you so that creditors can talk to each other in a coherent fashion about how you handle credit. So you have 3 reports, and they'll have slightly different information about you on them. So it's good to read all 3 reports, but they are all the same KIND of report (put out by 3 different companies.)
No. The score is not worse. It's a different scale. CK uses VantageScore 3, which puts different values on items in the reports than Fair Isaac Corporation does.
Like if you are used to using a Fahrenheit thermometer, and then someone gives you a Celsius/Centigrade thermometer.
0 degrees C is NOT colder than 32 degrees F. They are, in fact the same temperature.
It's not an exact analogy, but hopefully it gives you a better idea.
VantageScore is used in some places and Fair Isaac is used in a lot more places. So it's the one to use if you have the ability to check.
My Vantage 3s are about 50 points HIGHER than my FICO 8s. But they both go up to the same stimuli and go down to the same stimuli. Not the same amount and not at the same time always, but the trending direction will be shared.
This is why the reports are so much more important than the scores. The scores depend on the reports. As the reports get cleaned up, the scores have to rise. Tend to your good habits, pay your obligations every month, time will work its magic.
Most negatives fall off after 7 years from the date of first delinquency when it was not brought current again. Some bankruptcies take 10 years. Student loans take 10 years AFTER THEY ARE PAID, otherwise they come after your estate when you die.
Hard inquiries fall away after 2 years.
New credit accounts drop your score at first, then when they are consistently paid the scores rise again. This is why you should not waste your time by getting a bad credit card that you'll be unhappy with. Wait until you can at least get a Cap One card. Then keep that card forever.
We don't recommend people to use Credit Karma here because it's pretty wildly inaccurate in their recommendations and such. Their VS3 scores are accurate but nobody really uses VS3. Lenders use FICO scores instead. I recommend you to pull your reports at annualcreditreport.com and see what you're dealing with there.
Here's the thing, it looks like you have missed 5 payments on this Chase card. Late payments can be removed with some effort and luck. If you miss one more for a total of six, the card is going to charge off, and a charge-off cannot be removed by any means other than aging off. You do NOT want a charge-off on your report, so don't let this card charge off. Contact them and come to an arrangement.
Chase has already closed OP's account meaning they've defaulted and chase has prob already sold the debt to a debt collection agency by now. 5 missed payments that's almost 6 months without even paying the minimum payment.
Hm. You will want to get those working at some point because that's the official, government-sanctioned website for checking our credit reports. Your next best bet would be to create accounts at the bureaus directly and check your reports there. It's hard to know what to advise you because we don't know the status of the derogatory account, whether it's in collections or charged off or both, who the collections agency is, etc.
In any case, it's most likely charged off. If Chase still owns the debt (which again we can't know without seeing your reports), you will want to either settle with Chase for a reduced amount or pay the balance in full, as you prefer, but one way or another you need to get the balance down to $0 if you want to be able to start rebuilding your credit. A paid in full charge-off and a settled for less charge-off are scored the same by FICO, but a paid in full charge-off may look better to lenders. Depending on what kind of settlement you can get with them (some Chase settlements are insanely good, like 10%), it might be worth it to accept the settlement. If they're only knocking a couple hundred dollars off, I'd just pay in full.
Once paid, the charge-off will stop updating with a balanced owed each month, which will allow the charge-off to age and your scores to recover over time. It will take time to bounce back, but you *can* rebuild your profile to a certain extent even with a paid charge-off on there. After 7 years from the date of first delinquency (first missed payment), the charge-off will finally fall off your report.
If you click show details it should let you override that. I promise annualcreditreport.com isn't stealing your information. They already have your information.
You're not done for. You have to work on rebuilding. It's a tough road but you can do it. Is Chase still reporting a balance on the charge-off or does it show $0? Is there a collection agency listed as well?
By sending goodwill adjustment letters to the lenders/creditors asking them to remove the late payments as a courtesy gesture. If the accounts are still open and currently in good standing, you have a higher chance of succeeding at this. Some creditors (like Capital One) grant these requests somewhat often; others seem to refuse to do so.
Read through these two posts, the first is about how to write a goodwill letter, the second is about how to employ the goodwill saturation technique in order to send out the letters and have the highest chance of success.
2 months ago I was at 530 experian Fico8 and 545 transunion. I settled 2 collections for approx 69% with pay for delete and am working on 2 more. My Fico 8 at experian is 652 my transunion is 671. Hope to get close to or even in low 700s when the other 2 collections come off after completing payments.
You can recover. It will take some work and perseverance but you can recover.
Congratulations on fixing your credit! I’m around the same credit score as the OP, I settled to pay less on 2 Chase credit cards and still have about $4,300 debt with portfolio recovery. I heard about pay to delete a few days ago. I’m wondering how you’re experiencing was with pay to delete and is it possible with portfolio recovery?
Mine were with LVNV, not portfolio, unfortunately. It was smooth. I asked for 50% off. They countered at 75%. I asked if the 69% would work, but they had to agree to pay to delete. They agreed. Sent an email with the agreement, and I paid. Took a month to see it drop off
Settling for less and deletion! That’s awesome. What do you mean by it dropped off? Did your credit skyrocket after it was dropped off? Is that drop off and the delinquencies prior to pay for deletion still viewable on full credit reports?
Chase credit cards are the worse high apr, I lost job then got sued by them after charge off? The collections company wouldn’t take a pay off so I settled for monthly payments but people don’t realize that makes your credit look bad too because there reporting every month as. It not paid yet
You are not "cooked" . You have determined that you are not a slave to a score and credit system where they "allow " you to have credit card at 28%+. Use this time to learn to use cash and a debit card. You are free brother.
I was about here back in 2021 I think. Signed up for one two of those cards with security deposits. After about a year or two my credit was above 700. And has been hovering around 800 for the last couple. It’s doable.
Like a capital one card? I was thinking of getting a secured card in the mean time but a friend said it wouldn’t help me much even if everything is paid on time
Edit: Mission lane has increased from $250 to $4500, and my opensky card is just the $200 secured limit from when I first opened it. I now have about $50k of available credit. But those two cards, and paying off a couple of collections took care of my credit score within 2 years.
Credit karma not that accurate however it’s a useful tool …. Get a copy from all 3 credit Bureaus see what accounts needs to be paid off , contact them have them show proof you owe , call creditors up setup a payment plan or get the payment reduced you’ll have to do work paying back ! Don’t take any loans out don’t apply for any credit cards anytime soon …. I will take you time to rebuild your credit but you should see your scores going up …. I was once in $30k debt … had 3 kids maxed out credit cards and so on took me a good 5-6 years to improve my credit scores up to 760
unfortunately, it looks like you're in deep for the next 7 years. that being said, I'd work on getting stuff paid then open a new account (it'll probably have to be a secured account) and start on building. This way, you will make slow progress over the next 7 years. You will slowly build more and more as time goes on and in 7 years when that item drops off, you'll have great credit.
I highly suggest not just waiting the 7 years to start (which is what I'd done), as I'm now 45 and just getting close to 700 credit score (692 last i checked last week on experian.com) with only 3 years of history on my file...
5
u/enlightened_sun 4d ago
Just know there is no quick fix to credit, how to fix this is identifying the problem(s) that got you here in the first place, taking accountability to correct your spending habits, practicing self control, budgeting/saving, switching jobs with better pay or more hours, not borrowing what you cannot afford to pay back a lot of people are in the mindset that it's their money they're spending becuase of the ease of access to the money, you're spending the banks money, it's not yours.
From this point forward paying what you owe down to the minimum on time, every time and overtime your score will recover. You have a default that will stay on your credit profile until it falls off (7) years I believe.
It won't be impossible but this will make it very difficult for you to finance with banks and you will get shitty interest rates on top of that if you're approved for anything.
Lessoned leaned, this is your wake up call to get it together and keep it that way, life is hard enough and you're making it harder.