@Anonymous wrote:
I never realized how many of us lost good credit with a divorce. My scores were in the 800s when I was in my early 20s. A few poor decisions on cosigning and a divorce later...my scores had tanked to the high 400s. I don't think I'll ever cosign a loan for anyone ever again. My kids will get financial help with college, but I will not be putting my name down on any loans.
My hubby also had the bitter and vengeful ex-wife; additionally she had/has a diagnosed psychiatric condition. Instead of taking her meds, she was all about the "retail therapy," not to mention, her medical and pharmacy bills were through the roof. Of course, she couldn't hold a job for any length of time... some kind of mess would happen at work and she would either dramatically walk out, or get fired. Always someone else's fault, of course [*rolls eyes*]. He tried many times to confront her about her compulsive spending, and her response would be to go ballistic and lay a guilt trip on him about depriving his kids of the expensive goodies they wanted (not needed). I understand the need for women to not be put in a place of financial disempowerment related to marriage... but... the ex really took extreme negative advantage of the situation. Hubby's still cleaning up that mess, almost five years later... but I have shared a lot with him that I've learned via others' experiences via the MyFico community and it's really working! After his GWing of a LOT of old, PIF collections from his report, and successfully PFDing several that were still out there, I recently made hubby an AU on my Discover card and his scores jumped almost 50 points. Slow and steady... plan the work and work the plan... wins the race.
