My story to bad credit.

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone. I wanted to share my story on how I got bad credit.

i am 22 year old female with a credit eq 438 TU 505 ex ?

i got my first credit card from Wells Fargo with credit limit of 1000. I was working full time making about 1800 month. Back them credit was excellent. I later switched jobs and got a need new car. Still all was good. I then ended up consigning for my mom for a new car.(bad idea) She later got sick and went on disability and 35000 car got repossessed debt is 17000 after auction. I then had to pick up slack around house rent etc. I then got a behind on my own car and credit card and it got closed but continued to make payments.. That car was later totaled from an accident and I had gap but they didn't take care of late fees and interest fees. I never settled the debt like a dummy. I then got another car and then got into big time legal trouble(DUI, lesson learned) i had to get a $2000 lawyer through payday loans and then got severely behind on my closed credit card and my open credit card. I have a couple of collection accounts and I have a horrible payment history. Just recently paid down both open and closed credit cards below the 40% mark and I hope I can renuild my credit. The used car I financed last year got  totaled last month and paid for was never late. Don't have car and my credit is **bleep**. Thinking about obtaining a secured loan and secured credit card. 

I currently owe on old auto loan 2200.  I have 2 collection accounts equaling about 900 combined. There is nothing I can do about the repo. Now I guess I need to just start making a good payment history. Anyway wanted to share my story with someone.

Thanks for listening. I have deceided to have a positive outlook and hope it will get better. hope 2013 is the year.

[Shogun]

We live, we learn.  Pay down what you can.  Getting a secured card will help build a positive TL.  As for the baddies, list one or two of them on here, maybe we can help you clean that up a bit.

[QueenofReinvention]

The Good:

• (Hopefully) you didn't hurt anyone else, or yourself, AND that you learned your lesson.
• You are young and will have MANY years to rebound from this and move on.
• (Hopefully) you are employed and can start to chip away at some of your baddies.
  .

The Ugly:

• It will take time; there is no magic pill or anything, but that's ok, because this will be a learning process, and you never know, one day you could be helping someone else out and saving them from some of the mistakes you made...or not, but at least you could still assist them
• You will have to make sacrifices ---- so, NOT fun, but that's just the way it is.
• Throw ANY and ALL money you have ($1, $10, $100) at amassing some $$$ to either a. settle on some of your accounts, or PIF and write some GW letters for deletes.

Life happens, and hopefully we learn from our mistakes and don't make the same ones twice (we'll just make different ones ) Nobody is perfect. Regardless how it may appear from the outside looking in, everybody has their ups and downs.

Get up, dust yourself off and WRITE down a plan of attack. Chip away as best you can, and go from there. Also, as mentioned before, post some of your stuff, and I'm sure others will be able to jump in to help you. Plus, this board has a TON of information: letters, contact phone numbers and emails for CA's.  Also, if you haven't done so, get all of your free credit reports from annualfreecreditreport.com (I think that's the address). That way, you will be able to see EVERYTHING, and it will make your life easier to see what you need to attack.

Also, last two things, save some money (all the "money" people recommend having 3-6 months living expenses saved)...while not impossible, it's hard to do when you are paying off debts, but even $5.00 or $10 a pay period will add up quicker than you know. It's wise to have $1,000 in savings, because it seems like anything bad/unexpected that comes up always cost between $500-$1000 (Murphy's Law).  You'll also want to work on some positive trade lines, so you may need to get a secured credit card. A lot of credit unions offer them as low as $250 to start, and a lot of them you can add on to without the pulling your credit; you just add to the CD or savings account connected to that card.

Good luck and best wishes on your journey --- I'm right there with you!