Credit Card/Credit Rating Questions

[jmarie]

I have a friend who is scatterbrained. She got in a jam with a credit card with a promotional rate and then was late with a coupld of payments and lost the promotional and then letting the interest getting astronomical before applying to another credit card with a good promotional to transfer the balance and then the same thing happening.

She is a most upstanding individual, does a lot for the community, works for Habitat and very active in her children's life, just an all around good person. Just never on time.

She thinks she is now on the right track and is just going to have to live with these rates for awhile...but does anyone know how long it might take before she can ask for a lower rate? She is also concerned about her credit rating. Does anyone know how long it will take to repair that?

Thanks!

[cminmd]

Probably the best thing she can do is get a card through a credit union or ask someone to cosign with her and get her a better rate. If those are not options she could get a secured card where she has to pre-pay a certain amount, then can only have a balance a certain number of times greater than her deposit. What she really needs to set up online banking account to pay automatically every month! Those late payments are killers! Credit card companies are particularly strict about reporting late payments and affecting your credit scores. I had one late payment back in 1988 that fell off my credit rating only three years ago when I called them repeatedly. After 15 years you think they would give it up already!

[Miss Giggles]

I haven't had any late payments but I do get tons of balance transfer solicitations and I've done a few.

Some of them state in the fine print, the penalty for 1 late payment the default apr at so many months, the 2nd late payment is the default apr @ x more months.

Have her check. I think some of them said 6 months of on time payments and they would lower the balance..

She needs to make sure she is doing the on time payments, and then in 3-6 months, call up and see if they will lower her rate or if she is elgible for a balance transfer with another company.

she can also pull her fico score at myfico.com and make sure the info is correct.. the consumer unfortunately is responsible for making sure their credit info is correct.

[MISSINDI]

I would think after six months of paying on time, she should be able to get a better rate. They update the credit reports monthly, but it can sometimes take a few months before something hits the major three (i.e., paying off a car, etc.).

[funnybone]

As far as how long it will take to repair her credit rating, she needs to know what her score is now, to see how far she needs to go to repair it. If she doesn't she can get it online at www.myfico.com from any of the three agencies. We get our ratings from that site and they will let you know what you need to do to get to an ideal score. Fortunately, both DH and I have an excellent score so we have not use that feature.