Welcome to my happily ever after...
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credit woes
I haven't been very good about updating this week, and thank you for all the emails asking if I'd fallen off the earth! I'm still here....I just have a project that I've been working on.
I went to buy a car last weekend. When I applied for financing, I was offered a horrid rate....something like 17 % interest. So I got to looking at my credit report, something that I haven't really though much about before. I had some interesting things:
1) a $68 chargeoff to College Station utilities from when I moved away from college...who knew? I certainly didn't! I gave them a forwarding address. So I took care of that this week.
2) a chargeoff from Chase Visa from 1995 on a credit card that I stupidly abused before I knew any better. I didn't even think about the fact that the original mistake was on my report seeing as how they sold the account to a collection agency. Well, I paid that agency off years ago, but little did I know it would leave two bad marks: one for the collection agency saying "settled paid", and one with Chase, the original creditor saying "chargeoff". Why is it fair that it can be on my report twice? Also, I thought paying the stupid collection agency off was the right thing to do! A friend of mine told me that paying them off is actually worse than not paying at all when it comes to your score. That is seriously retarded.
3) in the last few years, I decided to be responsible with my credit and use my check card instead. Little did I know that NOT using my credit cards would come back to haunt me. I was told that I don't owe enough money to get a good credit rating! Now THAT is retarded.
So I have spent the week writing letters trying to figure out exactly what is going on. That's where I've been.
And let me tell you, credit reporting agencies (a la Equifax) are not the most pleasant people to deal with....
7:50 a.m. - 2003-05-02
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