First of all I want to say thank you to all of the members here. It has been two years since I started my rebuild journey and it has been filled with many ups and downs. I started here with scores in the 520 range, two super high interest car loans, and I was renting a house I really didn’t like because I had no other options.
I am certainly not complete in my goals but in the last two years I have made some accomplishments that when I look back, I am proud of. My scores are now at 700 or slightly above. While this is by no means great, when you compare what opportunities you get as compared to 520, it is a good feeling. At the beginning of my journey I had one $300 limit credit card from capital one. I felt lucky to have that and I treated it pretty good. I had a judgment on my record from a furniture store and a tax lien from when I moved for job relocation. There was not one thing on my credit report that was not true or accurate. I could have made excuses and dispute everything but I didn’t feel like that was the way to do. I had multiple collections from medical bills that were overwhelming, but there was no one to blame, and it was the hand I was dealt having a daughter that was born with a genetic disorder that required literally dozens of specialists at one time.
The tipping point for me is hard to explain as to when I said enough is enough. I think it may have been when I needed my mother to get me a living room set because I could not even get approved for one by myself. I was a 38 year old man with three daughters and I needed my mommy to buy me something. I set out then to figure out where I was at and how I could fix it. At that point I found this site and started reading any info that I could get my hands on.
Now two years later I have purchased a home (at a lovely 2.75% rate), purchased a brand new car (for less than my used one was), and refinanced my wifes vehicle (2.5% rate). I also currently have over 138,000 in credit lines (more than I will ever need), and can rest easy knowing that if something goes wrong that costs money, I can cover it if needed.
As I said earlier, I still have a lot of work to do. I still have the tax lien that will not fall off until 2022 (barring the July situation), and a few minor blemishes that will take until 2020 to be fully clear of. The main message I wanted to say is that the help on this site is invaluable and time is the real key. I didn’t want to bore you all with the details of how I repaired each and every item, but if you keep at it good things can happen. Now my goal is to stay on top of things and not waste the hard work that I have done by slipping up again.
