Your Credit and You

I have really been on this kick lately of getting my shit together. Besides applying to a better school, I have been getting my financial situation together as well.
I opened a high-yield savings account and I have been making regular deposits. That has been working out well. I increased my percentage of income going to my 401(k). My job matches at 3% which is good but why not send a little bit more?
And then there's my credit. I won't lie. I completely screwed all that up when I was at Univ. of Toledo. I had all types of credit cards and was buying all types of shit. Even paying my rent with the checks that Capital One sends with their cards. Craziness, for real.
Anyway, I was sick of being in the bad credit club so I said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! And I have finally seen the fruit of my labor. I checked my credit scores today and my score at TransUnion has went up 45 points!!!!!! It's still not where I want it to be but this is major progress and I'm so excited! Can you tell? LOL
Besides continuing to pay my bills on time, I disputed tons of shit. You can't even imagine how erroneous your credit reports can be! I had stuff on there that wasn't even mine!
Let me tell you what I did:

TRANSUNION: I have several accounts listed that have been paid off for months now. These were collection accounts that I'm sure will still have to be listed until they fall off over time. The thing is, they are being reported as unpaid. Helllll no! Since I have proof that they have been paid, I disputed them so they are being reported as such. It probably won't have a lot of bearing on my score but I want it to be 100% accurate. I'm still waiting on the results of the investigation for those.
Besides those, I one account that wasn't mine AT ALL. I disputed that. I also had two accounts that were paid off but were past the date of being reported. I disputed those as well.
I also had about 9 public records that were totally bogus. At my old apartment, they would file for eviction with the courts if you paid your rent more than 5 days after the grace period. There was a short period of time when I was living there and unemployed. Naturally, I couldn't pay my rent on time. However, I always managed to pay it before any eviction proceedings could be started. Because they did actually have to file paperwork with the court, I had all these dismissed civil suits showing up on my credit report. I called the court to see what I needed to do to have them removed (they were dismissed, I didn't have anything to pay and never had to go to court...I wanted them GONE!) and she told me to dispute it with TransUnion. I did that and a week or so later, I got an updated report showing they were all deleted. I was ecstatic! Simply having those items removed is what caused the 45 point jump. I can't wait to see what my score will look like once my other disputes come back. It might not be much but some is better than none.

EXPERIAN: These bastards had my student loan account reporting as being 90 days late one month. First of all, neither TransUnion nor Equifax were reporting it late. Why does Experian wanna be the asshole? Secondly, I have ALWAYS had some sort of deferment on my loans. I have not yet had to start paying them back yet. How, how, how could a payment be late...when I never had to pay? That makes absolutely no sense to me so I disputed that shit. LOL! We'll see what happens with that. I also disputed for an accurate update on the collection accounts that I paid off but are still being reported as unpaid.

EQUIFAX: I didn't have to do much here. Besides disputing the collection accounts listed above, they were pretty much accurate.


It will be about 30-45 days before I get the results of these disputes. We'll see what happens. I'll keep you guys updated. Wish me luck! And check your credit reports!!!! You never know what kinda foolishness they will have on there!