PLAN: January 2010

The plan for this month is to get all of the small accounts in some sort of contracted payment situation so they will be removed from our credit completely after being paid in full.  We are sending out letters to 1-10 of the creditors in the snapshot for January asking them to send us a signed agreement to remove their trade lines from our reports in exchange for payment.  This has been a successful technique for many people and we are hoping it will work well for us.

It does not remove a large portion of debt, only about $1500 or so.  But it removes a large number of accounts.  In fact it removes almost half of the negative accounts on our credit.  This will be a good start to all of this.  Once these are done we will focus on the next steps.  We hope to have agreements in hand by the end of January but that depends on how fast they respond to us.  We give them a time limit of ten working days to respond in order for our offer to be valid.

Next month:  We plan to open secured cards, as well as deal with any remaining accounts that have not responded to the initial payment agreements we are sending out.

SNAPSHOT: The Beginning

So lets begin by posting the bad stuff we have on our credit.  This list is a combination of both our reports.  Some are on both, but for the most part half is his and half is hers.  For privacy reasons I will not disclose which is which, along with the account numbers associated with these companies.  I will be posting snapshots each month to show where our scores are, as well as what baddies we have and what good trade lines we have developed or kept.

BADDIES:

	Company Owed	Expected Removal	$$$ Owed
1	United Compucredit	4/1/2012	$67.00
2	Absolute Collect Svc	8/1/2013	$75.00
3	MAF Collection Services	1/1/2014	$100.00
4	Gulf Coast Collection	4/1/2014	$100.00
5	AFNI	4/1/2012	$158.00
6	Enhanced Recovery Corp	5/1/2014	$171.00
7	AFNI	12/1/2012	$199.00
8	Certified Recovery System	5/1/2011	$305.00
9	BCA Financial Services	9/1/2015	$397.00
10	CCS/First National Bank	5/1/2011	$455.00
11	AFNI	6/1/2010	$781.00
12	Creative Recovery Concepts	7/1/2010	$9,538.00
13	Midland Credit Management	10/1/2010	$750.00
14	AFNI	6/1/2011	$773.00
15	IQ Data International	6/1/2011	$15,943.00
16	Santander Consumer USA	3/1/2015	$5,851.00
17	Consumer Portfolio Services	5/1/2015	$11,609.00
18	Verizon	7/1/2015	$2,023.00
19	Verizon	1/1/2015	$1,011.00
20	Financial Credit Services	11/1/2014	$503.00
21	American Profit Recovery	10/1/2014	$810.00
22	Continental Finance	1/1/2014	$556.00
23	MG Credit	11/1/2013	$1,055.00
24	First Premier Bank	5/1/2012	$507.00
25	Arrow Financial Service	5/1/2012	$701.00
26	Credit Management	4/1/2012	$972.00

SCORES:

These scores are as of 2 years ago.  I have been able to pull our most recent credit reports, but not our current FICO scores.  I will be updating these soon in a new snapshot. 

Hers: TransUnion-525 Experian-504 Equifax-524

His: TransUnion-571 Experian-533 Equifax-527

GOOD TRADE LINES:

Several Student Loans - paid and closed

Old Kent Home Loan - paid and closed

GOALS FOR NEXT MONTH:

We want to have deals worked out with accounts 1-10 to have them deleted if paid in full.  We have the money ready to do this and want to see these gone asap.  It will be half of the accounts on our credit and will remove a lot of negative items.

We were stupid

My husband and I were stupid.  Its a fact.  We had lots of money so credit never seemed like something we needed.  So we never took care of it.  When we were young we let things go, and only paid when the creditors got annoying enough to not ignore.  We knew their games, their empty threats, their tactics.  None of it mattered.  Why should it?  We did not need credit!  We had tons of money to buy in cash.  Credit meant nothing.

That was really stupid.  About 2 years ago I was contracting with a company for work regularly, and we based all of our lifestyle on that income.  Then the company I contracted for changed owners, and everything changed.  I no longer had contract work, and the businesses were not bringing in enough income.  My husband's income would cover everything, but just barely.  We have two leased cars, and a house, as well as a loan for some property we own...all in my mother's name.  We make the payments, but because our credit is trash we could not get the loans without help.  It was no big deal at the time.  But now its huge. 

My mother also lost her job with that same contracting company and she could not make her part of the house payment (her portion cancels out her side of the taxes) so she let it go into foreclosure.  She is applying for modification through the new plan the president put into place but that is going no where.  Soon we will need to get a home in our own name, turn in the leased cars and get new ones, and rewrite the property loan we have.  This is going to take credit.

Its time to grow up.

So here is our credit, point blank.  And the future is all about rebuilding the past.  I am going to use every tactic I have read about to try and clean up the credit we have, and use the secured forms of credit to add to our existing history in a positive way.  We are determined to fix what we have walked away from in the past.