@jamie123 wrote:Lowest I was ever at was 350 and I'm not sure which CRA that was from.
This happened about 18 years ago and is the reason I'm on these forums now. Now remember, 18 years ago the Internet was in it's infancy and any kind of credit information or scores were hard to come by.
I was in my late thirties, owned a successful small business with 12 employees and was a high earner with about a 100K income at the time. I had 4 credit cards that were at least 15 years old and my oldest Sears credit card was actually 19 years old at the time. My scores were in the low 800's the last time I actually saw a score and this had just recently happened when I bought 1 house and 1 condominium.
Yes, I had just gone through a so called friendly divorce with my wife. We had a huge house in the burbs and when she wanted a divorce we decided to sell the big house, buy a small house for her and my daughter and a condo for me. The small house and condo were in the same city and only about a half a mile apart from each other to make my daughter's life a bit easier. She would still be in the same city and would be close to her friends no matter which parent she was with. Well...That was the plan anyway.
Once we sold the house and moved into our new residences, splitting up all our belongings, we did a quicky six week divorce because we had everything all divided and a child custody plan in place.
The day after the divorce was final I found out the REAL reason we divorced. My wife had been having an affair with someone that I knew. I knew I was in trouble then, I just couldn't fathom at the time how bad it would get. The guy was a real low life a$$H### and I couldn't see how my ex-wife didn't see that. Well...I'll spare you all the gory details.
Five months after the divorce my wife filed to have it re-opened stating that I hid assets and wanted the courts to re-divide the assets. She went after everything I owned from my business to my season tickets at a MLB team. She wanted max child support, not our pre-determined and agreed upon amount. She demanded full custody of my daughter with me having only very limited and supervised visitation rights.
Then the letters started arriving...
She let her house go into foreclosure and my name was on the mortgage.
She filed for bankruptcy and my name was on some of her debts.
I started to get letters from credit card companies demanding payment for cards that I never had. I come to find that after our house mortgages closed but before the divorce happened she had opened 7 credit cards in my name, forging my signature and maxing the cards out right before we were divorced and then stopped making payments. By the time I received these letters from the credit card companies the accounts had been closed and they were demanding payment in full no payment plans available. The total I owed was $20,000. I was so pissed off at the credit card companies I paid off all my balances and did the most stupid thing (Besides marrying my ex-wife.) that I have ever done. I closed all my credit card accounts. I was getting very close to flat broke. All my savings and retirement funds were pretty much gone at this point.
My daughter joined music class and needed a clarinet. The school said that you could rent them from a local music store. I stopped by the music store to rent the clarinet and unbeknownst to me that they needed to run a credit check before renting the instruments out. 350! I had been working with a sales person but the owner actually came out because he wanted to see what a person with a 350 score looked like. I kid you not. I had to buy the clarinet.
So yes, you can get into the low 300s but you have to work at it! It only took me 6 months to go from the low 800s to 350!
I lived a cash only lifestyle until about 2 years ago when I decided to better my scores and found out just how important credit cards are needed to do that.
And yes, I have built a better life with a fantastic wife, a couple more kids and a few mortgages since then.
P.S. Yes, through the psychological testing that is required nowadays in child custody cases I found out that my ex-wife was in fact a psychopath. Really! I won full custody of my daughter. My ex-wife paid me $50 a month child support.
great friking post! lol, ty for sharing that one. i really needed it as i just made a 3 month (96% of income) budget to knock out some heavy tax debt. when i crashed my credit (same horrible, emotional divorce), i stayed as far away from checking my score as i could (i'm sure it was under 400). i flew to venezuela and bought a 42' sailboat with cash and lived a hard and poor (but beautiful) life in curacao. 7 years later i returned to a 625. hardly felt it at all. 
thanks again for sharing, that rocked
Thanks for the inspiring posts that I've read! I love a good, and more especially, great comeback story. And some of them here, especially from Jamie were quite the doosey. 
I must admit I too laughed at the clarinet piece as curiosity does in fact get the best of us all sometime and I would've been very curious myself. Although it really sucks that you had to pay all that debt from the ex that you had nothing to do with. 
Anyway, I appreciate your very personal and touching post and I'm sure most that have read it feel the same way. I wish everyone luck on their respective journeys!
Starting Score: 611 (02/28/2014 EQ MyFico) 608 (Barclays TU 03/28/14)