Is it ok to just report to 1 credit bureau instead of all 3
The reason you would want to report to all three is because lenders don't usually query all three. Thus, it may be that your negative mark will be missed by a future lender because that lender didn't query the agency you chose to report to. Generally, it is cheaper to report to more agencies than to query more agencies, and since those reporting are also those querying, it is in their best interest to continue reporting to all agencies, and expecting others to do the same. Each agency calculates the score independently based on the information reported to that agency. Thus only reporting a negative item to Experian will mean that TransUnion and Equifax scores for the same person will be higher.
It sort of sounds like you want to contradictory things: (1) to fix your credit so you will be able to get loans and (2) to have more money available to spend now. It sounds like the latter is probably not possible.  Not without getting into a worse situation than you are currently in (based on what you have written the next step is payday loans and the like, which is basically financial suicide). Fixing your credit is simple.  It's just not fun.  Cut your spending.  Cut it way, way, way down.  You will certainly have to change your lifestyle. I'd suggest taking a second job. Make the minimum payment on everything, then put all your extra money toward the most pressing things: I would focus on the former.  As you pay down your debt your utilization will go down, and this will raise your score automatically.  When you pay off your highest interest rate debt, don't change your spending.  Instead put everything you were putting to that to the next highest debt you have.  Continue until your highest interest rate loan is at or below the mortgage rate. When you get to this point you will notice that your credit score is vastly better and you are no longer spending all your money on interest.  You will probably be in a position to buy a home.  And you will have the satisfaction of knowing you did it yourself, rather than having a bankruptcy judge force you to change your lifestyle. A note on the items in collections: make sure they are all legit.  If any are wrong, it is pretty straightforward to contest them with the credit bureaus and get them taken off.  Things in collections will drop your score severely. Here's my take: 1) Having a car loan and paying it on time helps build credit. Not as much as having credit cards (and keeping them paid or carrying balance just enough to be reported and then paying it), but it counts. 2) Can't you set in your bank, not the lender, something to pay the car automagically for you? Then you will be paying it on time without having to think on it. 3) As others said, do read the fine print. You could achieve the same result with a balance transfer with many institutions. Some institutions allow bank accounts to be used as the balance transfer destination (instead of another credit card). Balance transfers typically have much lower fees than cash advances, and also are typically more readily available during 0% interest promotional periods. After you receive cash in your checking account it is just as fungible and liquid as any other source of cash. Making the answer yes. One caveat being that your credit utilization will also spike, which has the effect of lowering your credit eligibility for the mortgage. But there is a delay of a month or two before that is reported to the credit bureaus, so the time delay mitigates that particular concern. Assuming you are asking about a credit score in the United States, the following applies. To find out your FICO score, navigate to AnnualCreditReport, the official site to help consumers receive their credit report from each of the three organizations providing these scores - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.  You are - in many states - entitled to a free copy of your credit report from each of these organizations annually.   This copy of your credit report will not contain your credit score from that organization.  It will, however, contain information that goes into your credit score - the lines of credits on file, any delinquencies reported, etc. If you decide you would like to pay for your credit score from each bureau, you will have the option to receive this information while getting your credit report, but you will have to pay a nominal fee for it.  Remember that each of the 3 bureaus gives you a different score.  Averaging your 3 scores should give you a good idea of your FICO score.  Note that your report is far more important than your score - once you know that, you know if you're in a good place or not. These other questions are so close that they might even be considered duplicates, and provide other suggestions for how to check your score. As a warning, don't trust the many ads out there saying you can get your score for free.  Only AnnualCreditReport is considered a safe place for entering the very personal information required to get a score.  The FTC backs this up. Early on, one might not be able to get credit for their business. For convenience, and the card perks, it makes sense to use the personal card. But for sake of a clean paper trail, I'd choose 1 card and use it exclusively, 100% for the business. Not one card here, one card there. I have a fair number of cards floating around some reasons I have opened multiple accounts. I am not saying that it is for everyone but there are valid scenarios where multiple credit cards can make sense. Sometimes what happens is that a creditor will hand over accounts to a collection agency for action, and after a period of time, it may be reassigned to yet another collection agency if the first one was not successful.  Theoretically, this should not be cause to reset the date of collections on your bureau file, but that very well could have happened here. Another instance when this happens is when someone contacts a creditor about a collection item on their report, either to pay or dispute it.  Either way, this restarts the 7-year clock on that collection item, so if a debt is old enough, sometimes the best course of action is to let it go.  If a debt has been in collections for 4 years, let's say, and you decide to pay it off now, your score isn't going to improve because you paid the collection enough to offset the effect of having it refreshed on your bureau file.  Besides, creditors know how old the debt is, so waiting 4 years to pay it isn't going to win you any favors in their eyes anyway. To your question though, it seems to me the most likely thing is that somehow the debt was refreshed through some action by the creditor or one of the agencies assigned to collect on it. I hope this helps. Good luck! You want to have 2-4 credit cards, with a credit utilization ratio below 30%.  If you only have 2 cards, closing 1 would reduce your credit diversity and thus lower your credit score.  You also want at least 2 years credit history, so closing an older credit card may shorten your credit history, again lowering your credit score.  You want to keep around at least 1-2 older cards, even if they are not the best. You have 4 cards: But having 2-4 cards (you have 4) means you can add a 5th, and then cancel one down to 4, or cancel one down to 3 and then add a 4th, for little net effect.  Still, there will be effect, as you have decreased the age of your credit, and you have opened new credit (always a ding to your score). Do you have installment loans (cars), you mention a new mortgage, so you need to wait about 3 months after the most recent credit activity to let the effects of that change settle. You want both spouses to have separate credit cards, and that will increase the total available to 4-8.  That would allow you to increase the number of benefits available.