HI! My husband and I didn't pay a great deal of attention to our credit. Feb 2013, my score was 490, his 520. That was the wake up call we needed for us to begin aggressively correcting our credit. After spending a lot of time contacting creditors, making timely payments, and paying off collections, our scores are FICO scores are between 630 and 670. We hope to purchase our first home this summer! We are in the "re-building" stage - we have no credit card debt, and only have our car and student loans on our cr's, so we need to establish other lines of credit. Our goal for 2014 is to see our score reach the 700's, and finally purchase our first home.
I hope everyone succeeds in making their goal a reality in 2014. I wish you all luck, and hope you do the same for me!
Hello everyone,
Long time reader, first time poster.
a little background:
In Jan 2005, I bought my first home. Way too much house for me and way too high of a payment for me to maintain. I take full responsibility for that one. Jan 2008, I have some serious medical issues come up that result in me being hospitalized for a week and between all the medical bills, missed work, and expense of maintenance medications, I found myself maxed out on my credit cards and barely making minimum payments on them. In Sept of 2008 my car blew up, I had to buy a new one and with no cash to play with, the only way I saw was credit once again. This was the final straw. In Nov 2008, I surrendered the house to the finance company, stopped paying all the credit cards and basically became a hermit for the last 6 years.
I did have the foresight to keep one credit card, my auto loan, and my bank account (all the same CU) in good standing, never late. Everything else was charged off and has either been paid off or I am in the process of getting them settled. I have 3 collections (2 medical and one from Fingerhut) that I am in the process of PFD on. Still waiting for the response to the first wave of PFD letters.
I have in the last month opened 4 new accounts, Capital 1 (500), Credit 1 (400), Buckle (300) and PayPal SmartConnect (300). Used the shopping cart trick from MyFico for the Buckle card.
My goals:
1. garden the new accounts
2. no more applications until next year
3. work on removing the 3 collections from my reports, all the other bad stuff falls off at the end of the year.
4. get my scores to 700+ on all 3 reports.
5. finally get that AMEX I am wanting so badly.
Any thoughts or suggestions you guys can give me will be most appreciated.
This might seem like a dumb questions (& maybe this is the wrong area to post it), but I was hoping to add the "Fitness Challenge" signature to my profile & I keep getting a message saying I'm posting incorrect HTML. Is there anything else I need to do other than copy the code, change my #s, & paste it into the signature field under my profile?
Starting Score (02/01/2014): EQ 548 EX 548 TU 564
My husband last his job in 2007. Ruined both of our credit. We have been rebuilding ever since. Last year financial outlook was looking great when a creditor reported a repossession on my credit twice as two separate accounts. Dropped my score 90 points. Had it removed but my score has never recovered. Very disheartening since I have worked so hard to pay off all my baddies, and wanted to buy a home. My husbands score dramatically improved and we are under contract for a home, I just won't be on the loan. Recently got approved for several retail cards through shopping cart trick.