@Anonymous wrote:
I am honestly here to just kind of vent and I need some encouragement. I started on my husband and I's rebuilding process. I am 28, he is 32. We have 4 kids. We have owned two houses but currently rent. Our plan was to rent for 2-3 years and buy again. Our gross income is about 90k, but with 4 kids in daycare we pay them around 26k/year. Well, in order for us to buy a house again we both need good credit scores AND a down payment. Mine are horrible (around 580 mid score), his are not terrible but still not great (around 680 mid score). I have been working on having some errors fixed on our reports and I got us a credit card to help (we did not have any before)
I got a medical bill in the mail yesterday that was past due and I called to take care of it today so it wouldn't go to collections and hurt my already terrible score more. Well, I took care of it and also paid a few that were in collections directly to the hospital that thankfully had not gone on my credit report yet. It was a lot of money for our family ($800) After I did that, the gal I was talking to looked at our other accounts with this hospital. (Each family member has their own account) and apparently we have over $4,000 in collections right now to this hospital. Looking at our credit reports none of the collections on our reports belong to this hospital, so apparently they haven't reported them to our reports yet, which I guess is a plus (even though some are as far back as 2012). She is sending me an itemized list for all of the collections but I am so overwhelmed with how to dig ourselves out of this hole and I am just hoping somehow I get lucky and no new ones will be added to hurt my already bad score even more. Totally feeling like I want to give up and ignore it all again, but I know that's not the right thing to do. However, to know we have about $8,000 worth of medical bills and ALL of them are in collections is so overwhelming and feels impossible to me (all while rebuilding and wanting to save money for a down payment)
Okay, that was a lot of rambing and if you made it this far, thanks. Any encouragement is gladly welcome.
I know it can be overwhelming at times, but taking control of it and being proactive on things goes a long way towards easing your anxiety. Right now, savings should not even be on your priority list, until you get those bills paid off - you need to throw everything but the kitchen sink at them. I would look for ways to reduce the daycare costs as well. Once they are paid off, then go whole hog on the savings.
For rebuilding purposes, you both need to have three bank credit card at a minimum. With his scores in the upper 600's that should not be too difficult. I'd suggest looking at Cap One to start with.
Good Luck to you.