Congratulations!!! I just joined the 700 club today as well. I just wish my EX and TU would catch up to EQ....I am going to keep up the GW efforts.
012019 Fico8/Mortgage Score: 
Thanks everyone!
Interesting question @AbsentMindedProfessor, how about a few paragraphs, just because it might inspire others.
Sadly, up until about 2 years ago I never even looked at my credit reports, I'm 36 by the way, and was never really taught about credit. I went into a Ford dealership to try and get a truck loan and some place approved me but the interest was sky high and they wanted to strap a frigging GPS to the tuck so they could track it down because I was so high risk. I was a little offended and walked away, that’s when I decided I needed to do something.
A google search lead me to this forum where I learned about the free annual credit reports. Pulled them and those suckers were long, 20 to 30 pages each and had 26 charge-offs and collections. I ignored the ones that were going to age off within a year and attacked the small couple hundred dollar ones that I could knock out quickly, then worked my way up. I would send DV's and to my surprise some replied that they would be removed from my reports from that alone. If they did validate I sent a PFD next and offered to pay in full. I was lucky, every one I sent was eventually accepted, though I had issues with some like EOS-CCA.
I also consolidated my student loans which accounted for 10 of the 26 bad accounts which took them to a 0 balance. Sallie-Mae would not budge so I had to wait her out, only 3 of those remain on my reports and should be gone later this month. 3 of those 10 were directly with the school and I was able to get removed with GW's.
I don't make a ton of money, under 50k, but I changed my spending habits a lot so I could pay the debts. Eating out was a big one for me. I of course spent a lot of time on here researching each collection company before I approached them. Just looked at my profile for kicks and is says 9,192 minutes online, over 150 hours. If you see my post count it wasn't posting, it was reading.
Basically, I put everything I had into it and attacked it.
Starting Score: Fico TU 571 (11/21/12)