Through no fault of my own (in brief: I was unconscious, but may have been unwarrantedly credulous later), a collection agency's action has become visible on my credit reports. How can I remove these? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Dec 15, 2009 - 7 answers

Should I disclose this stuff on my rental application? How far back do they check these things, anyway? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Jun 30, 2009 - 7 answers

where do i get a credit report? wikipedia says annualcreditreport.com is the way to go, is this correct? do i have other options? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Aug 22, 2008 - 14 answers

What does it indicate about my formerly-bad credit that I could be accepted today for a regular contract by a cell phone company? How can I tell when it's the right time to apply for a credit card again? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Jul 26, 2007 - 14 answers

Help us save our credit! We're not sure why, but our mortgage company started returning our automatic bank payments a few months ago. [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Feb 3, 2007 - 6 answers

Background checks: I have a job interview coming up, and wonder if they'll do a credit check. If they do, I'm in trouble. I need this job very badly...thus the bad credit. Besides credit, employers may check education and criminal backgrounds (mine are clean), but do they have to let you know? How do you ask a potential employer about this without raising flags? While we're on it, is there a secret shit-list out there that employers may go to to see if you're a loser? Especially in software/web development in the northwest...
posted by anonymous on Jan 10, 2005 - 42 answers

I'm in college in the U.S., and have a few state student loans. They were under a forebearance that I once requested, which ended four months ago. I didn't realize this, and ignored the mail that was sent about it because I thought it was the usual mail they send me about how I have a loan and ads for consolidation. I just recently got this fixed and the forebearance backdated so it will have another year from when it ended. But I now have two 60-day late marks on my otherwise good credit report. Anything I can do to get rid of them?
posted by anonymous on Jan 8, 2005 - 5 answers

CreditFilter: Two years ago, not really understanding the importance of good credit behavior, I let a department store card slide for 180 days, twice (I KNOW!). This impacted my credit history greatly. I had previously had 4 years of good payment on two credit cards. Over the past year, to help recover and instill good habits, I pay my credit cards in full every month (read: no personal debt) and added a paid off car loan to my reports (15K). My CC limits have slowly increased but my score has remained somewhat the same (10 pt increase).

What can I do to get out of this rut? Some collegues I know have a sizable CC debt (around 15-20K) with less income than me but have great scores and could buy a house tommorrow with no problems. What am I missing and no, credit-fixing agencies are NOT an option.
posted by anonymous on Dec 12, 2004 - 11 answers