Quote:
Originally Posted by desdansmoncoeur
I messed it up a long time ago - deliquent accounts, ouch. All my bills now are auto-deducted: auto insurance, credit card, Netflix, World of Warcraft - for that reason. Sometimes I'll pay it ahead just for peace of mind prior to the due date/auto deduction. USAA offers CreditCheck monitoring for $5.50/month and I have that too, and it's gone up a whopping 5 points since I started it (about 6 months ago). I saw on a site a few days ago about how having a balance higher than 30% of your overall limit is actually a bad thing - I wasn't aware of this - which led me to suck it up and pay off my balance of $480 out of $500 *nods*
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Sounds like you're on the right track...and the next step is patience. It takes 7 years for the accurate, but negative stuff to age off of your record...no matter what any "we fix your credit" scam company wants to tell you. You can fix inaccuracies, but not erase your mistakes (generally).
Having said that...if you have unpaid balances that have gone to collections that still show on your credit report...sometimes you can negotiate to pay a reduced amount if they'll remove the report...but be sure to get that in writing and not just take their word for it.