Hello all! I am a new member to the forum, however I have taken a look in here from time to time via Google searches for various credit related questions I've had. This will be long winded, buy I am hopfull that I will come away with some good advice.
Backstory: Being young and dumb, I made really bad decisions on not paying my debts. I had multiple collections, many delinquencies (up to 120 days late,) and of course high utilization for what crappy credit I could obtain. About 3 years ago I decided that I really needed to start working on rebuilding my credit. I wanted to marry the woman of my dreams and she had/has excellent credit, and knew eventually we will need to do adult things like buying cars and houses, etc. At that point I had 2 credit cards (secured USAA, and CapOne Platinum,) and a car loan (around $21,000 with a whopping 16% interest rate.) I looked up my credit scores at that time, and they were in the upper 500s.
What I did: Most importantly I married the girl! Collection accounts were paid (most of them in full, some negotiated,) I paid off my credit cards to 0 balance, and refinanced the car with a credit union for a much lower 6.5% interest rate. I made sure to make all payments on time, but on occasion let my utilization be reported upwards of 80%. I do still have 1 medical collection account for about $180 that I can pay, but haven't done so since I want to research this whole pay for deletion thing I've read on here. About twice a year, I made an effort to upgrade my existing credit cards for points/no AF, request CLIs, and apply for new lines of credit.
Where I stand today: We have a baby boy! My credit cards are now a CapOne QuickSilver (3,090), Discover IT (5,500), AmEx Blue Cash Everyday (10,000), and Chase Freedom (9,000). All of the cards are at a 0 balance, and are used and PIF before the closing date. I still hold a balance on my car loan, and had to buy my wife a car last year. We do make extra payments towards the principal, and are due to be PIF by May of next year. Discover FICO has me at 685. My wife no longer is working, but my income is sufficient for paying bills and slowly building savings.
Future goals: My wife and I have come up with a 4 year plan and drawn up a budget projecting that far out to be able to save enough to buy a house with a sizable down payment. We want a conventional mortgage and we will probably wind up buying the house that we rent, so we are willing to wait and plan. My late payments all have a DOFD in 2011, so they should be dropping off in the next few years. As stated before, the cars will be paid off next year, and are in great shape, so unless there is a catastrophic failure or accident, I don't foresee having to buy a new vehicle (it doesn't hurt that I married into a family full of master mechanics!)
Plea for advice: What do we do now? I know that my AAoA is not great, so I plan on letting that grow. With my cars being paid off next year, will that negatively effect my types of accounts? Will I need to get an installment loan at some point to make a better overall picture for a mortgage application? Will only time make my credit score increase now? My wife's FICO (from Discover) is 770, so I'm not too worried about that, however with her no longer working I don't believe that it will weigh to heavily on a mortgage application.
Thanks for reading my wall of text, and any advice I can get will be received with loads of appreciation!
