Hello! I'm a long time lurker but new member to the forum. I am very grateful for all of the great info I've learned from here about rebuilding my credit!
A bit about my situation: my DH lost his job late last year, which put our financial situation in a really bad situation. At the time, I had way too many store credit cards, 2 Cap One cards (platinum and cash, limits $750/2500) , $300 B of A Americans, a 5k credit card with a local credit union and a line of credit/auto refinance loan with the credit union. The credit union loans were cross-collateralized, so in order to keep the car, I had to keep making payments on all my loans. Eventually, the car was repoed, and we filed a ch 7 in September. We've just been discharged about 10 days ago.
I knew immediately that we would need to get our credit reestablished, so I applied for a Cap One credit card and was approved for 1k. I did the shopping cart trick for VS and was approved for $250, but I didnt buy anything. I also applied for Discover IT, thinking it would counteroffer a secured card, but it didn't. I definitely don't want to get back to a place where I have too many cards or inquiries so I stopped applying for cards.
I also know we NEED another car, so I applied for preapproval for an auto loan with my bank US Bank online (yeah, I know I was unlikely to happen, but I thought my banking relationship would factor in). It said that my Transunion score is 591. I still haven't heard back, but I'm sure I was denied.
I went to my local Ford Dealer today in hopes that they could finance me with little to no money down. To my surprise, I was approved fairly quickly by Cap One Auto! I paid $500 down and got a base model 2017 Ford Fusion at 10.9% interest for 72 months. The finance manager said my having my DH cosign helped, but he filed a ch7 with me and had less credit history than me. I believe his score with Transunion was 583. Our combined income is about 70k. We were also told that my payment history actually helped, even with the repo and ch 7.
I just wanted to post this because I thought I had little to no hope in trying to get a car this soon given th circumstances, but it worked out for me, so it is possible to work out for someone else getting right out of bankruptcy. I now have the one Cap One card coming and this car loan, and I may get added on as an AU with my daughter's Amex. I am going to garden now and hopefully get better scores in the near future.
