topic Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild? in General Credit Topics

What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

HindSight_20_20 — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 15:57:18 GMT

Without getting too personal I'd like to know what caused 'you' to find yourself rebuilding 'again' with regards to credit FICO's and accounts?

For me is it was a divorce - between loans for Lawyers, split in assets, driving distance for meet-ups/drop offs etc. both saving and CC's were hit pretty hard.

While I dropped to the 500's from the mid 600's (best avg. score for me was 650ish across the board) so I've begun rebuilding and it's easier now than it was before because of all I've learned here previsously.

I think the hardest (must frustrating) part is the lenght of time negative entries remain on your profile for all potential creatitors to see. Thank goodness for Secured CC's from some nice banks with graudating terms! Whew they are helping my Fico's quickly number wise anyway -

Curious as to the major top 3 or 5 reasons people find themselves rebuilding...

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

twall06 — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 17:07:12 GMT

Was young and dumb is what caused mine a couple charge offs and defaulted on student loans. Started out with scores in mid 500s now they are around 700 have some high balances right now that need to be paid down they went up after my divorce having to adjust to one income.Then my dad was diagnosed with cancer so I put my boys in daycare (even though my parents still wanted to watch them) which was more than my house payment. He is cancer free now and they help me with child care now. I have not used my credit cards in probably six months and have just been paying everything back down. So while I am not rebuilding again I realized I was headed for disaster again if I did not get things back under control with a solid plan.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Girlzilla88 — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 17:45:08 GMT

I never knew how it worked and nobody really explained it to me it wasn't until I actually needed it for a car loan that I thought to better understand it I thought if you had a good one awesome but if you didn't you just didn't and that's how it worked and if you had a higher income you just had higher credit.....butttttt after researching and building on myself I am glad to say I started even though I was 29 at the time hahahaha. Yes I know I waited late ....really late but now I have a lot better credit and more doors open for me and I really really really wish someone explained this to me when I was younger so I wouldn't have been put through such hurt before BUT live and learn and hopefully people will help people more and these forums help the way I wish I had before.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 19:13:26 GMT

For me, I got into credit trouble when I was younger and in the military. And then I met heroin after I got out of the military, and I threw everything away. Burned every single creditor I had, thankfully a lot of them were kind enough to remove the tradelines.

2+ years clean from that crap, and about 8 months into my rebuild. I still have a long way to go with credit, but I am a hell of a lot closer now than when I started rebuilding.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

HindSight_20_20 — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 22:48:41 GMT

@pursell1911
Congratulations on 2+years clean!
Also thank you for your service and sharing your story. You never know who needs what you've shared here.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

HindSight_20_20 — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 22:51:31 GMT

@ twall06
That 700 fico score zone.... whew I am waiting for that day over here!

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

HindSight_20_20 — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 22:53:34 GMT

@girlzilla88
Nice comeback though!! And yes now you can help other people as well.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

AverageJoesCredit — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 23:13:41 GMT

Filed bk7 over 10 years ago due to being young dumb and living beyond ones means. Didnt realize i could rebuild right after, took about 8 years before i even knew i could have credit again , found myfico and have rebuilt quite well for my low income. Amazing and diverse group of people here in Ficoland, and eternally grateful

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

HindSight_20_20 — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 00:33:45 GMT

@AverageJoesCredit
Wow 8 years before you even knew you could have credit?!? But you know what? All we hear about BK is (10 years) so I can see how your thought process could go there.
My thought process would've been the same had I not known about myfico.

My BK was removed from my credit file back in 2012. That was a looooong 10 years!

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 04:10:55 GMT

Mine is probably more of a build than a rebuild.

Just always have paid cash for everything my life. Finally decided to care one day (looking ahead to possible house purchase.) Started looking around, found this place. Now it is my thing.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 04:29:19 GMT

My wife got injured at work. Ended up being forced onto a short term leave of absence which turned into long term. Two months later I was injured and ended up on a short term LoA. We were both receiving 60% of our paychecks for around 6 months. Then she was receiving nothing and I had to take a new, lower paying job. One income meant we were living on credit cards to make ends meet.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

CA4Closure — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 07:17:10 GMT

Foreclosure Halloween 2011. I was evicted by the Sheriffs department. It all began in 2004. Lost my job and taking care of my elderly father. My siblings never helped me and I had to take a lot of time off work to attend to my father's needs. Pressure from this attributed to work related issues which eventually got me fired. I couldn't find a decent job that paid well but I eeked out a living barely making ends meet.

As my father became more fragile, I was forced to hire a live in aide at $4,000/month. I had to take a second mortgage out on the house and I could not repay this. During this time Obama had a program to help people like me but numerous applications were lost. I reached out to Wells Fargo who held the loan on my house for help. I lost the house close to Halloween 2011 and I was living in a Days Inn at $1,100/month. I maxed out my Capital One VISA card but found housing in January 2012.

The foreclosure ruined me financially as I lost my life savings in that home. The house was virtally turn key. The investor who bought the house bought it cheap I owed $200,000 and he turned it around and sold it for $650,000. When this occurred my FICO score was 320. Fast forward to today my FICO score across all credit bureaus is between 819 and 842.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

calyx — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 21:04:55 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Mine is probably more of a build than a rebuild.

Just always have paid cash for everything my life. Finally decided to care one day (looking ahead to possible house purchase.) Started looking around, found this place. Now it is my thing.

I'm the same - not so much Rebuilding as "Building late in Life" and it's MyFico's fault (Thanks!)

I pretty much cash-onlied everything (except my cars) most of my life, the one exception is a store card and a credit card from college which were closed out from the cessation of existence by both companies (bank and store). While married my ex opened all kinds of credit accounts, didn't pay bills, and engaged in other 'shenanigans' during our marriage, which wrecked my report. Unfortunately we were in a community property state, so there was little I could do about it. I can't be mad at lenders/collection agencies for (legally) trying to get their money back, even if I was not involved.

The divorce finalized a little over 8 years when I pulled my credit reports just to clean it up. I really wanted a honest, clean report, and to be able to finance a new auto loan if it became necessary. My feeling (and suggestions from a friend in the mortgage industry) was since I could cash-only my life (sure, bad credit required additional deposits, but that was never an issue), I would just wait out the SOL/7y+6m timeline and then pull my reports and mop up whatever was left. The only negatives on my report that were my own doing was defaulting on student loan ages ago (when the ex was in charge of household finances - but I can't blame them too much, it was still my ultimate responsibility), which had/has been brought current.

In retrospect, I wish I had kept on top of my reports, because I'm still getting erroneous stuff deleted (both fraudulent accounts and incorrect addresses/information thanks to said former spouse) and it might have been easier to do it as it happened.

When searching for information on dealing with erroneous info and the CRAs, I kept running across MyFico and started reading a lot here. I learned about how important your entire credit profile can be, and it's not just about keeping negative stuff off. So I opened a few accounts, and I have a much more robust plan moving forward. Because I never learned to rely on credit, I have no problem being a transactor. So now I'm building credit history, increasing my FICO scores, protecting my bank account (by not using debit cards) and gaining cashback or other benefits from using credit cards.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Physh1 — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 21:31:21 GMT

Bad personal decisions along with primary job loss & a prolonged court situation led to me defaulting & nearly filing bk. I struggled for 7-8 years with no credit & trying to make headway where I could. I was in the 790-810 range before all of that...dropped way down into the low 500's & now I'm floating in the high 780's-790's...

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

HindSight_20_20 — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 21:57:45 GMT

@physh1

Inspiring! Thank you. How many years did it take to get back to the 700's after your setback?

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 03:28:26 GMT

Ignorance and bad luck for me.
 
I had 4 different accounts go from clean to dirty in the span of 1.5 years or so.  At the time I knew nothing about credit, never looked at reports or any CMS, so I had no idea that any of the accounts were in bad standing.  2 of them were joint accounts that I co-signed on and the individuals making the payments were careless and missed some.  One stopped paying all together at one point.  The other 2 there weren't joint accounts (my own accounts) were a mortgage and a finance account for some furniture.  I double paid my mortgage one month and asked the lender to apply my extra payment to the following month.  They didn't do as I requested and the account reported late 2 months later.  The finance account I had something like 12 months of 0% interest to pay it off.  I paid the thing off 6 months early, at least I thought I did, but short paid the final payment by $2.93 somehow.  The account ended up reporting late for $2.93.  My mistake on that one, but it honestly was pretty silly considering the dollar amount.
 
Anyway, due to ignorance those 4 clean accounts went dirty (120 days, 90 days, 60 days, 60 days) so my rebuild involved getting those 4 accounts back to clean status.  It took nearly a year, but with a heavy GW letter campaign I had 100% success. 

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

AverageJoesCredit — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 01:57:45 GMT

Great thread OP. Its just really humbling reading others stories . Amazing to see people come back from crazy life events

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 02:14:08 GMT

I had a good job and made decent money. I was overspending like crazy though because I liked to buy other people things. I did keep it all together (never late on anything, car lots even said I could do whatever I wanted because my score was so good).

I did realize though that I was in too deep and starting to drown. I started chipping away at my debt and I was making good progress working my way out of the huge hole when I realized my health wasnt going to allow me to work anymore.

So, I filed for disability and I filed BK. I have just begun my credit rebuild and know a lot more now about credit than I ever did before... thanks to yall on this board.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

Physh1 — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 02:52:09 GMT

@HindSight_20_20 wrote:
@physh1

Inspiring! Thank you. How many years did it take to get back to the 700's after your setback?

It was around 2008ish that things went south for me. Everything happened at once...it was def rough...I started working 3 low paying part time jobs that were willing to work with my oddball schedule due to court dates, lawyer meetings, etc. I paid what I could but I was financially in the hole with no 'real' job. Around March of 2016, after being a cash only guy for all those years, I was able to start making forward progress as some of my negatives fell off...

I was just into the 600's when I started rebuilding with a Cap1 quicksilver card & a Sync Amazon store card. By October-ish of 16 I was in with Citi, BofA, & Discover. Everything was sub $1000 limits but I let them all grow with good use & payment history. By mid 2017 I was back in with Chase, limits were increasing, Barclays approved me, etc...by the end of 17 I was in the mid 700's...

Since the end of 17 I've been laying low-ish...just letting things mature, letting inquiries age off, & I've started to prune down a little, merging lines, & focusing on card combos that work for me.

Overall, I really thought back in 08 that my chances of a decent credit life was down the toilet. I had a choice when stuff hit the fan...it was either letting some of my cards default or letting my timeshare loan default. I kept the timeshare loan current...some cards defaulted. I believe that keeping my timeshare current helped me HUGE in aiding my rebuild. I don't recall my thought process back then, as much of my memory of events were focused on larger issues, but I do believe is has impacted my rebuild process positively.

So, to consolidate my answer to your question...really took 10 years total to get back into the 700's...8 years or so of lying low & doing nothing with credit & ~2 years of actual credit work to crack 700. I'm hoping by end of 19 to be touching 800.

Re: What Caused You To Have to Rebuild?

HindSight_20_20 — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 12:08:29 GMT

@Workin4abetterFICO
Cash for everything is still a goal for me as well, even while rebuilding.

No one ever ask me for for an ID on large purchases when pulling out cash...