My wife has awful credit...

[pizzadude]

I wouldn't worry too much about focusing on her scores at this point unless she will be applying for a car or home loan anytime soon.   What types of derogatory information is on her reports right now ?    What open CC accounts does she have, and what are the CLs and utilization ?

[Anonymous]

She has 2 credit cards, and an old home loan that she had foreclosed on about 6 years ago. (Before we married) One CC is Capital One, with a $500 Limit, and its maxed, and over-due, (4 years old), and another CC with Amex, with a $1200 Limit, maxed and over due (4 years old) I haven't ever heard of any of this happening, because every time that she buys something, she uses her debit card, which is linked to our checking account, which is joint. All of the bills for our house are in my name, as is the mortgage, my car loan, and her car loan. 

[GregB]

It is true that the Truecredit score is totally different than a real FICO score. It is also most likely that the EQ score was also not a FICO. However, it probably doesn't matter much. At least in my opinion.

A Vantage Score of 554 is HORRIBLE. It only goes down to 501! Does it really matter if her FICO is 3-something, 4-something, or very low 5-something?

Might as well start looking at her complete credit picture and start working on errors and such. You could go to annualcreditreport.com and get your free report for each of the three CRAs -  less the one or two where you have a report along with a useless score.

I think you have a bit of work to do before paying real money for a real FICO.

[casmith1980]

I can definitely respect how your wife is feeling about this.  It's embarrassing to admit to credit problems - and it's definitely not something you run around telling people.

For the foreclosure - I'm not sure if there's much she can do about this besides waiting it out.  Others might have more experience with this and hopefully will chime in.

For the Capital One & Amex cards - when you say they are over-due, are you implying they are late?  If so, by how long?  If it's just 30 days, and hasn't been sent to collections, I would suggest paying them off and cutting up the cards.  I would probably close the capital one since it most likely has an annual fee, but keep the Amex open for her AAoA.

I'm thinking she might have other negatives on her report besides the foreclosure judging by how low her score is.  Take a look and let us know.  There's a wealth of information on this forum and she'll be cleaned up in no time

[drkaje]

Why didn't she ask for help sooner?

[baronofthenorth]

My wife is in the same camp.  Lates, collections, defaulted student loans, divorce, bankruptcy, etc.  Score in the mid 500's.  Not doing anything unique right now, just letting time clear things for now by allowing old stuff to drop off the report.  Keeping her name away from anything other than AU on my accounts that are PIF ALL THE TIME.  I make sure her student loan gets paid every month.  Will use future tax returns in lump sums to eliminate it entirely.  A few years down the line I will start her with a secured card to start rebuilding (sometime after 2013).  In the long run she will be in a better place, but it will be a long time.

[Anonymous]

The cards were from 2008, and she got them in 2007, and hasn't made a payment since about 2009. 

[Booner72]

I say - Congratulations to both of you for fixing credit before you NEED credit.  The last thing to do is repair while trying to borrow -

I say - follow the advice of Casmith - very good info on how to get started.  (Not to say anyone else's advice was bad, but that advice was very specific on WHAT to do).

I'd like to add:  She *(and you in my opinion) should OPT OUT.  This prevents people from looking at credit reports without a permissible purpose.  The credit bureaus SELL our info to collectors - they alert them when we start doing things credit-wise (Like paying off debt, adding credit, etc etc).  They don't like it when we OPT OUT.  Then they can't make a buck - and it prevents us from having lowlife bottom feeder OLD OLD OLD collections popping up out of the blue.  Just google "opt out" and you do it once for all three bureaus for 5 years - or you can write in and opt out for life.

Good Luck!!