Completely starting over from scratch - First post!

[muddyboots]

Hi everyone!

This post is literally the very first step I am taking at taking control of our family finances & beginning to clean up our credit reports. My husband & I both had good credit at one point in time & both have owned our own homes in the past. We are looking to clean up our credit so we will be able to purchase a home again within the next 2 years. Neither of us has ever filed bankruptcy but we both have old debt (single & combined) from a depressing period of time in our financial history. We are now just beginning to pull out of it, mostly because my husband is now employed with a stable job & because I was able to begin babysitting on the time, while caring for our 3 children. Some of the debt will be close to falling off, so not sure there is much I want or can do about those except wait.

But first things first. What is the most reputable place to pull our scores? We are on a tight budget so the cheaper the better (as long as reputation is good).

Also, any words of advice for first steps? We have some old medical bills, student loans in arrears, 1 major cc about 2K & a handful of smaller collection accounts that are small & that should've been dealt with (our wrong, but we were depressed & didn't want to deal). I will know more detailed info once I pull the reports. Current credit is a car loan that we got last year & utilities. We don't do credit cards, although we would like to get some small secured ones to help improve our scores. Last year when we ran our credit to get a loan, my score was around 600 & hubby had a big fat 0 score. We are not sure how that happened but it did. He hasn't had new credit in a few years, so I am guessing most of his old stuff is probably gone. Haven't checked score since last year.

Thanks everyone! Looking forward to getting started.

[Whitneyy]

Hi and welcome! Congrats on making the first step, you will find some valuable information in these forums!

I don't worry too much about pulling scores, I would rather pull good reports which you can get from annualcreditreport.com if you haven't yet already this year, it's free. It gives you DETAILED information.

As far as what to tackle first, go with whatever is out of the SOL because if you offer a small payment, they can't sue you for the reminder of it. Go with the companies who are known to offer pay for deletes so that way, when you pay it's deleted. Once you start to do that, if you have at least $300 that can be tied up for a while, I would try for a secured card from somewhere like your credit union, capital one, bank of america.. etc.. 

I'm excited for your journey, good luck!

[spike69]

Welcome to the Boards!

You and your H are eligible for one free report each year from the three bureaus via annualcreditreport.com. That is realy step one. This way you know what is on each report. Once you have those, post what you see- "baddies"- collections, charge-off, etc. As well as any positive trade lines. Many of the established folks here will tell you the scores are only semi-relevent and those who pull your reports are looking at the details, not the score in most cases.

Also, you will have to start building positive trade lines. I focused just on the bad stuff clean up and now wish I had started the positive trade lines sooner as I would have built up credit while fixing my past errors. Depending on how bad the credit dings are look for secured cards to open and use wisely. Keep utilization less than 10%.

All the best on your rebuild!

[Shogun]

+1 on the excellent advice given by our members above.

Don't go on scores right now, save yourself some money.  We can worry about scores later.  Get your free reports, and get your free scores from CK, CS and Quizzle.  When you get things cleaned up a bit, then you can buy your scores here, but only when you're ready.

So go get those reports, and let's see about doing some cleaning and get you in a better financial position.