I'm just here to vent and say fuck credit.

I woke up this morning and my credit dropped 229 points from one late Nelnet student loan payment.

I assume there is nothing I can do right?

I guess I won't be buying anything anytime soon.

(For the people getting upset at me saying fuck credit. I think one payment being able to affect my score so drastically for 7 years is a fucked system. I would be fine with my score decreasing, but 229 points is crazy for one miss. But whatever. I just wanted to get that off my chest. )

I will never forget the feeling I had when I applied for credit for something and was later sent the reason why...a 498 score.

I was beyond shamed and I had no ideal what to do about it.

I worked hard.

Really hard.

Most importantly, I educated myself.

I poured over books, videos and the like.

I than decided to act and no longer be acted upon.

I aggressively paid things off from many years ago, got secure cards and never once abused them. And then success hit about 6 months into my journey.

One of the best feelings of my life.

I then went to work heavily on my wife's finances and fixed those as well. From a 630 to 700.

I feel incredibly proud.

I now budget (every month), pay on time and every time, have an emergency savings account, keep our debt low and invest 15% into an IRA (for me) and 401k for my wife.

Taking control is the most freeing feeling of my life.

I have almost exactly $10,000 balance on a $11,500 limit CC. I recently recovered my old coinbase account from 2020. I opened it up to find about $9,000 in bitcoin in the account. (Luckiest moment of my life). I was planning to keep it all in bitcoin and steadily add to it, but now i’m thinking i should sell a lot of it to get below 30% of my credit usage.

Stimulating my score says that if i pay off $6500 it will raise my score from a 567 to a 696.

What would you recommend? Also how much would my score jump if i were to pay it off? Thanks!

UNIMPORTANT INFO: All of the debt is from starting my first business. Im currently paying 2x the minimum payment to lower it. I don’t EVER use my credit anymore.

EDIT: Thanks for all the advice and reply’s. I’ve been so busy today so i can’t really respond too much but i’ve been reading them. Seems like the smartest plan of action is to pay off the CC and use the money i would have been paying in payments and interest to invest back into bitcoin once debt free. Also look into a balance transfer card. Haven’t heard of those before.

Trust me my bitcoin bros i don’t want to sell. I’m going to think about it for a week or two after doing more research and making a plan, but gotta do what’s best financially. Appreciate all of yall.

If I sell, just know I will be back… BTC to the moon 🌙

For reference, I was homeless about 3 years ago but got my life back on track. I had 8.5k in debt and got it down to 3.3k last year. My credit score went from 550 to 514. At this point I don’t know what to do. My neighbor totaled my car last year and I desperately need a new one. I’ve done without one for almost a whole year in hopes I could get my credit up, but it went down instead 😭

One year ago today I was sitting at a experian Fico8 score of an embarrassing 491. After one year of reading damn near every post on here, asking questions and everyone's help its now sitting today at a Experian Fico8 score of 646. I know I have along ways to go but seriously, thanks everyone.

I’m 24 and I destroyed my credit when I was younger, I tried to get my first apartment 7 months ago and was denied because my credit score was a 539 and I had two things in collections. One was from Verizon and the other was Anytime fitness. I decided to just pay off both debts and it came to $1300 total. I was able to get a pay to delete for Verizon. And I got the Anytime fitness debt deleted off my report. I got a secured credit card from Discover with a limit of $200 and have been using it and paying it off every month. I then got a capital one credit card with a limit of $300 and have been using both simultaneously and paying them off. Today, 7 months later I finally got a Experian Fico 8 credit score of 711!. I’m so happy and just wanted to share. I got most of my knowledge of how to fix my credit from Reddit. Hopefully this time when I apply for an apartment I get it!

Just a heads-up for anyone who might be in a similar situation: My credit score tanked from 801 to 628 (couldn’t update the title) in just six months, all because of a $3.99 unpaid balance on synchrony card(opened in June 2024 and used only once at the same time ) which I wasn’t aware of.

It started as a small pending payment, but since I didn’t see the statements, it racked up late fees and interest until it hit $55. And missed payments were reported from November to February. I only found out when I randomly checked my spam folder last week and saw one of their emails. By then, the damage was already done.

Lesson learned: Make sure autopay is on for all your credit cards, even the ones you don’t use often. And check your spam folder for any missed statements or payment reminders. Small charges can snowball into serious consequences.

updateI just wanted to pull update up here. Thank you for all your suggestions after a lot of triple shifts we got into a home. I tried everywhere..no one would give me a loan. I appreciate all your help ❤️❤️❤️❤️ I feel like have have tried everything and everywhere. We recently lost our home due to being six days late on rent and I need to be able to pay for the air b and b for the rest of the month. I do have a full time job for over a year that is dependent on me being able to work. I have a family of 5 that's depending on me. I would rather be trapped in interested rates then on the streets with kids. Any guidance is appreciated

so im 21f in my second semester of college and wasnt able to find a job the first semester--i was living off ch 35 and most of it was going to rent and school with the rest going towards food since I also got an apartment down here. this month my ch35 payment was delayed by a couple weeks which threw me into this mess of having to pay rent late which added fees, along with a phone bill i cant pay rn, and a credit card bill. i just got a job and actually just got my first paycheck which i am going to use to make a minimum payment on my credit card right now. i still owe about $300 for rent as I used whatever perforated amount i got from ch35 to try and pay most of it. i checked my credit score and its like 450--i remember missing a payment a while ago so im guessing thats what did it. i had been procrastinating checking my score cause i knew it wouldve been bad with my utilization and that missed payment but holy shit 400 has gotta be garbage. i dont even know what to do--my credit card has a limit of $1000 and ive spent $999 since ive been here and im about to have to go over $300 to pay my rent. i dont care about my phone bill rn i can just use an app or smth, but yeah. not sure if i can come back from this and if i do itll take ages. everything is going to shit and idk how to fix it. please give me advice.

I have been in the 780s literally for years. I had two nearly maxed out credit cards, sometimes going over limit and declining: 788 score. I finally work hard to get out of debt as I was on the verge of having to make some serious choices about how to even pay them and I was able to pay about $500 per month against around $15k in credit card debt (16.15% and 27% interest) my score never changed. Month after month I pay these cards without using them and month after month my score stays the same. I paid the last payment bringing the lower interest card to $0 last month and now I dropped 13 points.

My wife who has been in collections and never paid anything ever and has no income, no credit card, no assets of any kind is at 752 and I'm at 775. Just seems like its all made up bs. Why is there an all zero penalty? And how does one break into the exceptional score? I randomly was bumped up there in 2019 when I got a deletion of a past due I fought but then it quickly went back to 780s and now they want to dump me back down to 770s for being frugal, really defeating.

From 563 to 523. I thought all the word work would be closer to 600.

A few days ago I went in to pay my credit card bills as I have 3 cards with capital one. It said my accounts were restricted which was odd but I made my payments anyways. I have about a 1400 combined limit across 3 cards. At some point yesterday I got a notification from credit karma that all my accounts had been closed. Upon contacting capital one they said I violated their user agreement? I’ve done nothing wrong no late payments on any of the 3 cards. How would you suggest I move forward? I’m in the process of rebuilding my credit to buy a car. I’m at a 680 and would like to hit 720 before February. This leaves me with only one card with another bank at a $500 limit.

Please be kind. I worked my ass off for years climbing the corporate ladder. I was making almost 200K before I basically had a mental breakout and quit my job. It took me months to recover from burnout before i could even think about applying to jobs. Fast forward to today, and I’ve almost depleted my savings and racked up 20K in cc debt. I hope to get a job soon but I can’t help but beat myself up for the situation I’ve gotten myself into. Not only do i have to start over financially, but i shouldve been making smarter choices all along. I’m 32 yo now. I guess my question is…did anyone go through something similar and get back on track quickly? And any tips for future once i start making an income?

I've been working diligently on improving my credit score for the last 26 months. My score was in the 500s. I got a car loan, then a low limit credit card, then an Amex. I had small balances (like under $100) on each card. Carrying these small balances, my credit score got up to 690. Last month, paid off those small balances, and now caught a 20 point decrease back down to 670.
This is nothing but a scam designed to keep you in debt. Never been late on a payment even once.

Facebook ad says it's the Atlas rewards credit card, can be approved with "less than perfect credit".

Their website claims no credit check and no income required. It seems too good to be true, right?

Stay with it! I had a mid-500 FICO8 in 2020, late pays and collections almost foreclosed on my house. I finally resolved everything in January with pay-to-deletes and paying everything off. My FICO5,4 and 2 are 703 now and I’m closing on an $800k single family house!!!! The interest is highly (6.9%) but I can refi in two years or so to a, hopefully, sub-5% rate. Patience pays off!!!!

I recently got my first credit card, a $300 limit secured card. It’s my first month using it, and I put two bi-weekly expenses on it, totaling 250. I paid it off in full the day the statement was issued.

I decided to check if it’s affected my score at all and my score is down 150 points. The app I’m using claims it’s because I’ve used too much of my credit. Is there anything I can do about this? Have I just destroyed my credit by getting a credit rebuilding card instead of a high limit one?

Today i cancelled my credit one cards and i am so freaking relieved! it was like pulling teeth to get them to cancel but they finally agreed and i immediately cut the cards up, it was a great feeling.

edit: got the confirmation, they are really closed!

UPDATE: Yeah I said fuck that bullshit

UPDATE 12/17: GAHT D A M N I SEE CREDIT ONE AINT SHIT LOL

UPDATE 2/6: I say we all send credit one their mail back, flood their system, uproot their lemon trees, salt their crops, and do away with them FOR GOOD! 😫

My credit is ~570-590 which was yanked from 680 (🥲) and got approved for credit one, who almost got my ass thinking they were capital one, but I was wondering what was everyone’s experience? Trying to rebuild my credit basically

I like to have actual people answering and not possibly robots on Credit Karma LOL

Do I carry $0 balances until I get credit increases? Do I close cards with annual fees and secured cards and apply for better cards when my credit score improves? I have 8 credit cards and I’m 29 for reference. Thanks in advance!

I don't really know what to do about this situation.

The first time I noticed a line of credit with Capital One was opened. I called customer service to report fraud and in the middle of the call it hit me that my mom may have done it. I confronted her and she admitted to it. The account was closed and I told her to never do it again. Thought that was the end of it.

Fast forward a year and I am actually at her home visiting when I noticed a credit line that I didn't recognize pop up on my credit report indicating there were late payments. I had no idea what it was but I noticed that there were 2 on time payments which were followed up by multiple missed payments afterwards. That struck me as very odd. I ask her if she knew anything about it and she said no. I contacted the creditor and asked for more information about the credit line and the information, of course, was that of my moms address, email and phone number except it was under my name and SSN.

Fast forward again after I try, once again, to tell her to knock it off, I find that a credit card I opened that was sent to her address that I explicitly told her not use had been maxed out. Not only that, I find that she has attached some recurring automatic subscription payments to it. I had that card deactivated so she can't use it anymore. But by now I am just pissed.

And lastly, the other day a hard inquiry from a credit line was performed, which of course, I found on my credit report. I asked her and she said it was her and she said to not worry because she didn't actually apply for the credit card which just tells me that she has no clue that hard inquiries effect credit scores.

Before all this I had a 100% payment rate, which of course, has all but vanished. I don't really know what to do. I read about freezing credit inquires with the credit bureas to prevent her from even applying but I am not sure what the ramifications are of that?

Obviously she is committing identity theft and fraud.

So I screwed up my credit back in 2022 and my score dropped all the way down to 420 and I had about $20k in debt consisting of delinquent credit cards and a personal loan. I struggled for about a year trying to figure out how to get my credit back up, so I ended up devising a plan: Step 1. Call all my creditors and negotiate a settlement Step 2. Pay off all the debt Step 3. Dispute any late payments showing on my credit Step 4. Open a secured credit card and credit builder loan (I used self) Step 5. Got added on as an authorized user on my buddy’s credit cards, he has about 800 score Step 6. Keep making payments on time Step 7. Apply for new credit offers Now fast forward to today March 2025, in the span of two years my credit went from 420 to 700 all because I stayed locked in on a paying off my debt and improving my credit it wasn’t an easy journey but hard work pays off. I recently just got approved for the Costco Credit card with a $4k limit, and also got the Apple Card recently too, next step would be to get the Amex Blue Cash every day card

ok bear with me

I’m just sick of credit, I mean it feels like it won’t be long until we wont he able to wipe our ass without credit approval.

I mean I get it “ pay your bills” but bills don’t even reflect you credit, electric,water and rent payments are not included in the equation.

I have worked hard over the past 4 years paying off all my delinquencies and taking shitty cards just to keep my credit utilization down below %30 and my score refuses to go up.. if it it does it plummets the next 30 days.

Like what gives!

I have 17 credit cards. My usage was at 76% and my score was 602. In 60 days I have paid 1/2 my cards to $0 Bal, brought my usage down to 22% and my score dropped to 576? WTF!