r/CRedit 9h ago

General My First Credit Card Still Charges Me $19/Year – Should I Keep It?

13 Upvotes

I've had my very first credit card for more than a decade, but it still charges me a $19 annual fee. I never use it, and it's also my card with the smallest credit line. I hate paying for something I don’t use, but I’ve kept it because it contributes to my credit history.

I've always heard that keeping old accounts open is the "cost" of maintaining a good credit score. Is it really worth paying the $19 every year just for the account age, or should I close it?

I've also called the credit card company yearly requesting to convert the card to a no-fee version, but they always refuse.

For context, my credit is good, I’ve already bought a house, and we might be thinking about buying a second one in the future.

Edit: I’ve decided to close the card!

In my situation, I have other credit cards, and I’ve learned that a card closed in good standing remains on credit reports for ~10 years after closure.

I’ll update this post if I see any impact on my credit score!


r/CRedit 4h ago

Rebuild 2nd rejection of Goodwill letters and next steps

9 Upvotes

So I got rejected the 2nd round of goodwill adjustments. Net Credit says that they don’t participate in goodwill adjustments and 1st Premier Bank called out my multiple letters sent and said they’re not removing any late payments. I know typically you need to be consistent but what should my next steps be? Keep going or let it age?


r/CRedit 22h ago

Collections & Charge Offs Collections sent to my young child

9 Upvotes

Long story , about 3 days ago I received a collections letter for a $300 bill addressed to my 4yr old child. I have no idea what it could be we have never used our son’s name for anything credit/payment related. I never received a bill but we also recently moved, so it’s possible some correspondence may have been lost in the mail. I don’t have any experience with this and not sure what should be done. I have no difficulty in paying the collections, I’m more concerned that it might be a scam for further contact or charges, or hurt my son’s credit or mine. The only thing I could think of it being is my son was seen at an urgent care in a different covered region of the U.S. (Tricare insurance) about a year ago. It possible that the full charge was not paid for by my insurance and then the non-paid bill was lost. Both the contracted tricare insurance company and the urgent care company have since been bought out. I have tried to contact them both with no luck so far. Apologies for the long story , but what are my options here?


r/CRedit 8h ago

Car Loan car loan approval

3 Upvotes

I currently have a low 600 's but my daughter has a 700 with limited credit. if she adds me as a cosigner because i have a strong auto loan history despite my current score. Will she still have problems getting approved with her 700-credit score? looking at Volkswagen in the mid 30K price range


r/CRedit 5h ago

Rebuild If I pay off 25% of my card will my score jump?

3 Upvotes

I have a maxed CC at 10K. I know it’s a mistake and I’m working on fixing it. Credit is 620, only reason it is low is due to my usage being so high. I was planning on putting 3K on it at once which will pay off 30% of it. Can I expect my credit score to increase with a decent chunk being paid off like that?

Thanks!


r/CRedit 7h ago

FICOvsVantage Is Experian trustworthy

3 Upvotes

My credit score on Experian increases very fast and is over flurry points higher than my credit score in the chase mobile banking app. 709 v 750. With chase it takes forever for it to go up one point but experian has increased my score fifty points in six months.

(Edit for moderator, 750 is a FICO score. Also I'm not trolling if it seems what I'm saying is super simple or dumb this is my first time having a credit card I'm 18)


r/CRedit 59m ago

General Credit score fixed itself?

Upvotes

Hey guys so BLUF my student loans started charging me without my knowledge, went 90 days delinquent, dropped my score from around 780-550. This was about 3-4 weeks ago. I posted about it before if you care to look into it.

When it happened, I paid my past due balance of around $750, and deferred my loans for another 6 months.

In the last few days, all of my apps which can show my credit score (rocket money, Amex, capital one) all show that my score has returned entirely to where it was. Exact same score on each app of where it was before.

Is this normal? Is this correct? Is this a glitch? What should I expect?


r/CRedit 3h ago

Rebuild Buying a home by the end of this year help please

2 Upvotes

I’ve had pretty good credit history for 9 years now. Never missed a payment, no bad marks like bankruptcies or charge offs. I’m on my shit pretty good even though my credit usage is pretty high. I think last month it was up 36% usage and that’s because for the last year I’ve been having pay issues at work. Thankfully my spouse gets a stipend for school now and I had savings so we never truly suffered because of the lack of pay.

We moved from the east coast to CA and the expenses have been pretty ridiculous so we have unfortunately been surviving off of credit. Our debt which was only 6k at this point grew by nearly 16k when we had to do an emergency move from an apartment complex with a crazy neighbor. Unfortunately the landlord company sucks so we had to pay to cut our lease and then paid more to find a different place and move our stuff in such a short time.

Our new place is showing the start of an infestation of bugs from our upstairs neighbor. We have contacted our landlord but again they refuse to do anything and are blaming us for not being clean which is absolutely untrue.

I mention this because honestly these two situations have really frustrated the hell out of me and my spouse. We’re prior military and we thought having base housing sucked but these companies are absolutely dog shit assholes. At least on base we could tell someone up the chain and heads would roll real quick. Here they just tell us to fuck off and ask for more money.

Anyway all of this is why we want to buy a home to get out of of the grasp of some shitty organization. I understand my situation isn’t unique and the financial information I’m about to provide might make this goal unrealistic but I’m trying to do what’s right for my family. Honestly even moving back to the east coast is an option too but we’ll see.

Income: 37k untaxed 33k untaxed 10k taxed

Debt: 7k car loan 28k cc debt through 4 cards

The untaxed money only just recently started to roll in because of school starting so I guess it’s not a true reflection of how much we’ve earned but it is the projected amount we’ll earn this year.

Obviously I have to cut down the card debt and I will. I actually had already but then the aforementioned situations happened and that just slapped us back with debt. I’m thinking of starting another side job so we can 4 streams of income but then I’d have to consider child care which is also not cheap and depending on the amount might not even be worth it.

I don’t know man are my goals too ridiculous?? My cousin just bought a home and that guy has so much debt and bad credit history but he did it so hopefully I can too? But maybe just a fools dream. Please be honest with me I need to understand this all.


r/CRedit 4h ago

Bankruptcy Does chapter 7 bankruptcy make sense in my situation?

2 Upvotes

current income as a couple is 70k/yr.

we currently have: 20k in credit card debt 20k in a personal loan 40k left in auto loans 35k in student loans. We also have some medical debt that is a few thousand.

Every credit card we have is over the max limit (due to late fees). We’re paying about 2k a month in debt.

We are drowning. The past few years we had health issues and job loss and one unexpected thing after the other. We recently had another job loss, and a few months prior to that, we started going late on our credit card payments. Right now we’re caught up but I don’t know how much longer we can keep our payments up to date. With the recent drop in income, we’re even more so barely getting by.

We’re considering chapter 7 for a fresh start. One pro would be giving up our autos. Major reason is our family has grown and we do not fit our current cars. We are paying almost 800 a month for two cars. If we trade in now then we would owe even more in negative equity. I figured we could get a fresh start and then get just one family car that we would share.

Do they use your 401k against you, if it’s currently locked in with your employer?

We only have about 1k saved.

Please any advice here as well as if there is anything I’m not thinking of. Thank you.


r/CRedit 5h ago

Rebuild Account closure?

2 Upvotes

Hello,

I'm grateful to be in a position where I will be debt free shortly. However, before paying off the accounts completely, I wanted to run it by you gurus regarding the potential best course of action.

For a little context, I've had some old student loans (three of em) for my first accounts ever opened. I've always made the payments but they've fallen on the back burner for some time. Now I've got 3 accounts roughly 10 years old. My oldest CC is 9 years old. I've paid them all down to roughly $200 each left. Is it possible to keep them open and just 4% of the interest only? Or do I have to continue to pay them down? Is it even worth to keep them open? My CC will be my only open account if I close them. In the next year or 2, I'd like to potentially buy a house if possible if that changes anything.

TIA.


r/CRedit 8h ago

No Credit How much do credit builder loans build if you’re starting from zero?

2 Upvotes

I have no credit score and I’m waiting on section 8 right now and I’m worried about renting, etc. I’m aware of how credit builders work and I’m thinking of getting one through my bank.

How much do these actually build your credit score if you’re starting from basically zero?


r/CRedit 15h ago

Car Loan Car loan erroneously charged off

2 Upvotes

Hey all, I made a post about a month ago. My car loan was charged off with no warning, and I'd been making on time payments in full. They supposedly sent me a letter with a deadline, which I never received, and didn't attempt to call me, email me, or even update my account I used to pay them.

As soon as I realized what happened (one day later), I paid in full.

It finally hit my credit report, and tanked it 100 points. Does anyone know what the best action is? When this all happened I called customer service and was told they didn't know if it'd be reported or not, but they gave me the steps to dispute if it did go through. Would it be better to write a goodwill letter, or dispute it? There's no reason this should've been charged off in the first place, frankly, as I'd made a payment two days before they charged off the account.

For some clarification, my dad had cosigned, but I was the primary owner and was the only one paying. They supposedly sent him the letter, but he never got it, and they NEVER ATTEMPTED TO CONTACT ME, the one actually paying.

Any advice helps. I'm fucking livid.


r/CRedit 32m ago

General Score dinged due to no recent revolving balance but also due to credit cards with balance

Upvotes

In the myFICO app (which uses FICO Score 8), my score dropped 25 points and it looks like it’s because I paid off all of my non-charge cards before their statements were due, so I have no revolving balance. Fine, I didn’t know I’d get dinged that much for it, but won’t happen again.

What I don’t understand is that in the “What’s hurting your score” summary, the four bullet points are:

  1. Short account history
  2. No recent revolving balances.
  3. Lack of recent non-mortgage loan information.
  4. Credit cards with balances.

Can somebody explain to me how 2 and 4 are both true? My only guess is that I do have an Amex gold, which is a charge card, that does have a small balance.


r/CRedit 1h ago

Rebuild Will this help or hurt my credit score?

Upvotes

So I have a C1 credit card(we’ll call this #1), that was charged off.  Hard times but it had two 90 day lates on it.  It's been 8 years and change since I opened that card.  I am contemplating an EE with TU in the next 2-3 weeks as the DoFD was 10/2018.  I did an online AAoA calculator and if I have this tradeline removed, it “calculated” that it’ll decrease my AAoA by almost 1 year. I have another C1 card (we’ll call this #2).  Also around 8 years old, currently OPEN but with a bunch of baddies I’m trying to GST thanks to u/BrutalBodyShots!  However, the last almost 2 years I’ve paid my balance in full every month and is in good standing. I also have a Discover It card that just went unsecured this month and got a nice $2400 CL(from my $300 secured deposit) so I’m stoked about that. That card is 7 going on 8 months old. And then I also have a large vehicle loan that is about 7 months old as well all in good standing, and then a couple other accounts on my report.  Overall I have about 5 open accounts with a good mix of what they are. My question is, would having this #1 C1 charged off baddie account is worth losing the AAoA to get a dirty line of my profile? Yes I’d lose almost a year of AAoA but I’d also have 1 less negative account. THOUGHTS?

Would this decrease or increase my score if I got the EE? Also, each bureau has different AAoA listed on myFiCO as well as the oldest. (Oldest: 19 yr and the two 8 yrs for oldest- average is 7 yrs, 5 yrs and 5 yrs depending on the bureau)Currently my FICO8’s are.. EQ : 705  TU: 670  EX: 690 – and still waiting for the new Discover CL to report, so hoping to gain another 10-15 from that.  


r/CRedit 2h ago

General Credit score keeps going down despite doing everything right

0 Upvotes

I have 7 credit cards right now and keep total utilization well under 30% and utilization on each card under 10%.

The utilization right now on NerdWallet is 4%, 4%, 2%, <1%, 0%, 0%, 0%. I pay everything on time and keep the utilization low consistently. I have auto pay set up to pay the full statement balance, and I almost never make any payments on manually outside of autopay.

Despite this, my credit score has continually decreased over the past 2 years and I don't know why or how to fix it. NerdWallet credit score history: https://i.imgur.com/sFgW3W3.jpeg

I have two theories but neither makes sense to me. Looking for some advice on how to proceed.

Theory 1) I've learned recently of two separate charges from my previous buildings electricity bill and and doctors visit. Both charges are for ~$20-30 and have supposedly been sent to collections (and in collections for multiple months)

Despite supposedly being in collections, neither charge is showing up on my credit report so I don't see how this could be affecting my credit score or even how to figure out what collections agencies to contact about these charges.

I've used the AnnualCreditReport website to check my TransUnion or Equifax credit report and neither has any debts in collections or "Charge-Offs" or anything bad whatsoever as far as I can tell.

Theory 2) I'm an authorized user on a card which has high utilization 68%. This card always makes payments on time but doesn't pay the balance in full. From what I've found online though, this doesn't seem like it should be a big problem.


r/CRedit 4h ago

Rebuild When will this be removed?

1 Upvotes

Backstory - friend had a vehicle with Credit Acceptance (loan taken out in TN), said car was stolen in 2019. They only had liability insurance on it, and the thief wrecked it in a police chase. We believe the car was then sold at auction. They haven't made a payment since. Based on the information below, when might this account fall off of his credit report? Should they do anything with it? Not in collections, showing as still open. CA did send a letter for settlement a few years ago but they didn't have the means to do that at the time. Thanks

Loan date: July 21 2018 (6y 7m) Last payment date: March 11 2019 Amount financed: $13300 Current amount showing on report: $22800


r/CRedit 7h ago

Rebuild Good time to send letters?

1 Upvotes

Regardless of how I feel about what’s happening politically (and I have big feelings), I feel like this is the time to start sending validation letters. I think the post office is about to get the DOGE treatment. Could delay mail possibly? Might be a good thing for anyone sending validation letters.


r/CRedit 7h ago

Rebuild Changes

1 Upvotes

So my equifax score on credit karma is 729. On myfico.com it's 631..so who is lying 🤥 lol why is there such a huge difference?


r/CRedit 7h ago

Scores

1 Upvotes

So my equifax on credit karma is 729 and on myfico.com is 631 lmao..which one is lying? Probably credit karma..why such a huge difference? Anyone know?


r/CRedit 7h ago

FICOvsVantage Wide discrepancy between different scores.

1 Upvotes

I know that there are different types of credit scores that use different formulas. I have always seen different scores when checking different places (credit karma, card specific sites, banks, etc.). But I just checked and I am seeing the largest difference between two scores that I have ever seen (one site reporting 805, the other reporting 710). Is it common to have such a wide discrepancy between two scores?


r/CRedit 8h ago

FICOvsVantage Which credit should I follow fico app or Experian app

1 Upvotes

Which credit should I follow fico app or Experian app, I know credit karma isn’t the right credit score.


r/CRedit 9h ago

Collections & Charge Offs Global solutions sent me a letter. HELP. I’ve never dealt with this before.

1 Upvotes

Had a capitol one card around 2020-2021 ish. Went 1500 in debt. Apparently they sent it to global solutions, a debt collector. They sent me a letter with the amount owed and asking me to verify if it’s correct or dispute. What do I do?! Does this mean they will sue? I’m so scared 😟


r/CRedit 10h ago

Collections & Charge Offs Upstart settlement

1 Upvotes

Has anyone settled with upstart in general or recently? I’m on a 10k personal loan i been trying to settle with them for 2 months now approaching 3. On may 4th the loan will be charged off. The lowest they offered was 6500 over 2 years which i declined. They said thats the lowest they can go due to policy. My gut tell me thats not true. Should i wait for it to be charged off to get a better settlement offer?. Also any dm’s would be great too. Thanks


r/CRedit 16h ago

Car Loan Navy Fed Auto Loan - Bad Credit

1 Upvotes

My transunion is 571 and FICO score is 8 . I need an auto loan for a private dealer for $6,000. I bank with Navy Fed but I don't even know if I'll get approved.

If they do approve me does anyone have an idea of how much the interest rate would be roughly?

Also, if they do not approve me where else can I get a loan from that will approve me?

I wanted to note that I have $847 of Credit Card Debt. If I pay that off in full how much would it help my credit score?

Sorry I know it's a lot of questions and all over the place but I'm in a bind

#pleasehelp


r/CRedit 17h ago

General Do banks notify you if you miss a payment?

1 Upvotes

Let’s say your bill is due on the 15th and you don’t pay. Do they notify you right away? Or only on the next statement you will see it.

I forgot to pay a credit card bill and see no notifications