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you need 2-3 revolving credits under your name, not AU, to generate a score. have you check what your score is right now
It's not just a matter of new accounts but also working on existing credit issues. Definitely hit the Rebuilding subforum and carefully research before taking action to address derogs on both of your credit profiles. Derogs tend to have the biggest impact and tend to hold one's scores down. While you definitely want to build positive payment history you also need to address the derogs where possible.
Hi Krista. What we are saying is that it's hard to tell you the "right" thing thing to do because that depends on a lot of things. These include how much negative information exists on your profile, if past debt stills exists how much, when the date of last activity is associated with each negative account, whether any of the accounts are close to falling off your report or close to crossing the statute of limitations, what your current income level is, and so on.
You may be in a stiuation where two things are true at the same time: (1) You have a big credit problem and (2) You want to buy a house very soon. I have discovered that this is much more common than I would have guessed possible. It's not that I can't symnpathize with both. But for me, when my credit situation was a nightmare, it didn't occur to me that buying a house was an option. I figured that I had screwed up, gotten into trouble, and that I would first have to spend a long time -- several years -- solving the credit problems, during which time I'd be renting. And that's what I did.
My own personal advice is to focus solely on credit repair. To do that effectively you will need to give up on the whole idea of house buying for at least a little while. And most importantly you should be spending time educating yourself on how credit works. That means spending a lot of time reading basic credit 101 stuff, e.g. the LEARN ABOUT SCORES link above, etc. The Rebuilding forum would probably be a good place to hang out as well.
PS. It's also easy to get conned into feeling I Must Buy A House! Like that's a necessary part of the Good LIfe. I will say that buying a house was one of the worst choices I ever made. I bought next to tyrannically loud neighbors and then two years later the economy collapsed. When I finally sold I had lost four years of sleep and $40,000. Many people have a far happier ending to their home buying story. But my point is that renting has a lot to be said for it. Owning a house can definitely turn out to be a disaster.
This explains what a Statute of Limitations is (connected with debt).
"We can't use my husband on the home loan application due to past Child Support and other past credit problems."
So instead y'all gonna put him on as AU?
I don't mean to be flippant, but as most know around here, business is business. But if it were me, I'd like him to show me what he has in mind to get his child support current and his other issues, or is all that fixed and just needs to age off?