I have been out of college for ~8 years, and have roughly 8K in student loan debt, with no credit card debt to speak of. I just downloaded Credit Karma and YIIIIIKES!!!
I've been a super-flake with student loan payments (pretty much pretended they were optional for the past 8 years) and as a result my score is TERRIBLE. Basically, the payments they wanted me to make were too high for me to make, and I would set up an affordable payment plan for a certain period of time (say, $55/month for 6 months) and once the window was over for the lower payment plan and they stopped auto-debiting from my account, I would forget/just not call Sallie Mae to set up a new payment plan. Then, they would hunt me down with random calls from Minnesota (Mumbai) and I would ignore them and panic for no logical reason until I couldn't stand it anymore. Then, I would finally call the nice Sallie Mae/Navient man in India who would ask me approx 3 robotic questions about my financial circumstances and put me on another reduced payment plan, which would inevitably end and then the same shit would happen (I would just not pay once the period ended).
My student loan debt is about $8K (unfortunately still pretty much what i started with, LOLZ).
I have 1 credit card that has a $200 limit just to "build credit" per the advice of my dad. I am in good standing with this card (never made a late payment BOOYA) but it's basically useless to me since I can't put plane tickets or anything on it. And I just looked @ credit karma and since I spend all of the 200 every month (which I didn't know I was not supposed to do) I don't know if it's doing me any favors in the credit building department.
Not that i'm trying to buy a house anytime soon, but I would like to not have a terrible credit score. If I pull up my Huggies and start making regular student loan payments, do I really need to wait 7 years before my score improves?
Any pro tips/advice would be greatly appreciated!!!
Submitted February 11, 2017 at 10:45AM by Squirmyworm1177 http://ift.tt/2l4Utdz
