@Anonymous wrote:
Hello all,
TLDR; Have worked hard to increase credit after BK and are trying to plan to finance a class A RV for full-time living to eventually buy property and build a home. I would like to see if anyone knows good finance options and I do have an account at a credit union but discouraged after my last loan attempt and a few small bumps in the road.
Little back story I grew up in a very abusive and drug ridden family and am one of the only people who didnt go down that path. I wanted more, I wanted better. I had close to 0 knowlege when it came to finance I married at 21 and had a child by 22. My wife and I have had our financial up and downs and 2 years ago were seeking chapter 7 due to my mother ruining my credit before I could. I didnt press charges and decided that eliminating it and starting fresh would be best. Almost everything prior to was put in my wifes name and over the span of 6 years I was able to keep her at a 720 until I just couldnt we had some hardships inbetween. I went from making 20k a year have made my way to 70k as of this year. We kept both cars in the chaper 7 because I have 0 missed payments on both.
That brings us the start of rebuilding my credit. I started in the first 6 months by getting and open sky secured visa. I put 300 dollars on it and started with a small bill. 3 months later I applied for a credit one card and was approved for a 500 dollar limit used that for gas only. I let 3 more months go by and applied for a discover it card and was approved finally getting cashback rewards and a 5000 dollar limit. at this point I said what the heck and applied for a paypal credit line and was approved for 2400 dollars and started to use that on smaller things that we needed here and there that needed ordered online. Things were going great at this point I am at about a year and my score is sitting around a 700-720 depending on where you checked. So my wife and I have toyed around with the idea of buying an RV and full timing to save on rent and normal associated cost. I have a friend or two who have went that route and have been very sucessful in saving money working towards building a home. So we found a vehical we wanted for towing and applied for a loan at the dealership for 14k I asked to only run my credit with one or two banks because I was worried about the hard pulls on my credit. He agreed and when he came back and basically said it was a no go unless we had 50% of the loan down instead of 2k and the trade in on my vehicle which would have been rolled into the loan they would have been giving me so 20k total.
So we walked away to make a plan of action going forward. I found out that he had run my credit through 7 banks so all those hard pulls showed up which dropped my score. I proceeded to open an account at a local credit union. threw some money into savings so I had something with them and left it alone assuming that would be the next place to try. I tried for some CLI with the current 2 cards and paypal with no luck. We had a stroke of bad luck and had to no choice but to max out the current discover card at 5k about 3 months ago.
I felt like I had hit a wall all that hard work and I felt like I was right back where I started. I got a new job making 30k more and felt like a lot more options opened up. I have projected for March to have the 5k card paid off and I will be back at only having 12k in student loan debts and the two cars. I have an offer from carvana right now for them to buy my car (I owe 5550) I would only make like 20 dollars on it but it will eliminate the 268 dollar a month payment at 16.8% interest. having both cars is really helpful sometimes but I work from home and honestly dont need it. We want to downsize all our stuff we have since switched to deciding on a Class A RV to fulltime in. We found a lot of pros to doing so but the loan we would need to take would be around 40-50k we would keep my wifes van which has a 3.6% interest rate at 14k left owed. This will be paid off by this coming year if we play our cards right. I would love suggestions going foward. Should I try with my current credit union and try and put 10k in savings so when I try for a loan there is more cusion in case they are concerned with the BK. Their rates on rv's are 7-8%.
Current scores according to experian I plan to wait and pull my full credit after I pay off the discover card in March.
Fico score 2: 645
Fico Auto score 8: 657
Fico Auto score 2: 701
Bank card score 8: 651
Bankcard score 3: 619
I have decreased credit utilization to 70% ( was 3% prior to the maxout of the discover card and the few other small amounts on the other cards) currently showing an 670 fico overall. I have seen others take a similar path to me and do much better getting loans and I am not sure where I messed that process up but I am willing to learn and grow so hit me with what youv'e got!
Things I didnt mention.
My wife is a photograper so her income is variable she is bringing in money and contributing. She is actively growing and this will be her first profitable year and she has worked hard to get here!
We homeschool our kid so my wife picking up something full time for awhile is not an option for us. I have thought about picking up a second job to make this go a little faster however I work technical work and am afraid I will burn myself out.
That's a long post, so if I missed something, be sure and say so. You are nearly two years post-chapter 7. That is good. 24 months is when most lenders who are ever going to work with you (with the BK still reporting) will let you back in. That 70% utilization is crushing you. Ultra high utilization can knock 100 points off your FICO score, just like one 30-day late can cost you 100 points. So you need to pay that down, ideally under 10%.
RV's are by nature higher risk than auto loans and real estate loans. That's why they want 7% to 8% and not 2% like new car loans. I would work very hard to try to be able to make at least a 20% to 30% down payment. I would also open some savings accounts at a couple of other credit unions. Navy is great if you can get in. Anybody can get into Penfed. Alliant is good. Where are you located? I always recommend going with the largest (by asset size) credit union in your local area and then a few of the big national giants.
If your wife's photography business is just taking off, the income won't count until there's two years on your tax returns, and they will only count the net profit, not the gross revenues, so when you write everything off to save taxes, you don't get much credit for income qualifying.
You can do this but you may have to wait 12 to 24 months to get all your ducks in a row.
