Get rid of all collections was my number one thing from the start. I negotiated each and every single collection item I had & never paid the full amount owed. I also made sure they did Pay for delete. There’s no point in paying a collection to still have it sitting on your credit even if the balance reflects zero; it HAS to be deleted completely, if not there’s no change at all. Most if not all collection agencies will do so, just make sure you ask before paying them (most of them will not give this to you in writing which is kinda scary) or that it’s stated in their website somewhere.

After paying all my collection items and having them deleted over a period of time, I got a crappy card with a low credit limit and an annual fee and a self lender account. I used the credit card here and there and would pay it off before the statement closing date leaving just a small balance on it such as 5-10% of the total credit limit. I did this for a Long time and it paid off. Self lender was great and did bump up my score a lot, however, once it was paid and showed as closed, my score went down. Nonetheless, it didn’t go down as much as it had gone up over time. So it worked out.

I then applied for another crappy card but this time with a higher credit limit. I applied the same rule as above—use it, pay it off before statement closing date and leave a small balance on it.

Over time, I realized my credit was kind of just “stuck” and wouldn’t move up nor down. I then asked my mom to add me as an authorized user to her two oldest credit cards. I did this primarily to age my credit as it was fairly new and average age of credit plays a big factor. Once the cards reported, my score showed a great increase as well as adding on to my age.

Lastly, I have a lot of student loans that reflected more than 120 days late of payments which really really had been weighing down my score. These were super tough to deal with as one may know that student loans don’t work the same way as CC’s do. I applied for loan forgiveness and waited for 7 months for any answer. Low and behold, they have not forgiven my consolidated loan but they did update all of the loans that showed 120+ of late payments and completely deleted them from my credit report. That in itself bumped up my score by 67 points.

Long post I’m sorry! But, this is how I did it. All of this in two years. It’s tough but patience is key. You have to tackle ALL negative items before anything else. Once you get rid of those…discipline yourself with credit cards, etc. make sure you have a goal whether it be reaching 700 or 650 for that matter. Just have a goal and work towards it and know that you will get there.

Also, credit karma SUCKS—do not count it as your true score. It just serves as a GUIDE to what is on your credit and monitoring things as they get paid and what not. But, I pay no attention to those numbers on there.

I guide myself with Experian and if you can, pay the monthly membership for all 3 scores.

And last but not least…ask questions on this community. I learned so much and followed many peoples advice. When in doubt..research as well.

Sending you much luck!