“Dear Steve,
I discharged my debt in 2010, opened a few charge cards to build my credit. Have been doing all the right things. On time payments, debt on cards never over 30%, paid my car off and my Fico score stays the same. 686 for a year now. Before bankruptcy my score was 750-790.
What is going on? I don’t know what else to do.I have gotten all my credit reports and there it nothing new that should stop my score from moving up. I also have a quetion about the first card I opened to get credit.
Foolishly I accepted a card with an annual fee. There were no other offers at the time. It has no balance except the monthly charge for the card fee. I wanted to close the account, but with my score not moving in over a year, I thought it might not be a good Idea. They charge 8.73 a month.
Any help will be appreciated.
Lynn”
Dear Lynn,
Maybe you can give me an idea by responding in the comments to the following questions.
1. What kind of cards are these? Store cards or major credit cards?
2. Are they reporting to the credit bureaus?
3. What is your credit limit on the cards?
4. Have you looked over your consolidated credit report to clean up anything that is not correctly reported after your bankruptcy? See The Get Out of Debt Guy Free and Easy Credit Repair Guide.
Please post your responses and follow-up messages to me on this in the comments section below.
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Hi Steve, For some reason I don’t get a response option after your answer, so here it is. Browser Issues I guess
5 Major Credit cards (Master cards & Visa)
Limits 1000.00-2000.00 (7000.00) total never more than 30% utilization
All report to three credit bureaus, all positve
So why does Fico not move?
Any thoughts or suggestions?
Thank You
Okay. So let’s gather as much data as we can. One source I like is the free credit score tool at CreditKarma.com. If you create a free account they have a pretty terrific credit score tool that shows you what is holding your score back and what specific changes will do to increase your score.
Let’s not guess about your specific situation and get some specific and actionable feedback.
If you decide to do that, let me know what it says.