Tell US your story, how did you get here?

[Anonymous]

I am in my mid 30's...as a teenager my parents didn't teach me about credit; and how important it is.  I  was a young single mother.  I worked some pretty bad jobs to make ends meet for myself and my son.  I didn't get much for child support.  So, I learned early on, not to depend on it.

I put myself through college.  But I had a difficult time paying the loan back.  It was more important to have food and shelter for my son.

In 2003 I filed Bk.  all the debt that I incurred was really taking a toll on me.  In 2004, I married my husband.  On our honeymoon, I had a seizure; I had to be lifeflighted off the island.  My Dh was worried.  The whole time I was being airlifted.  Was dear god, I will never be able to pay this bill.  (Luckily, we didn't know as we went through it, that our wedding date was the effective date for me to be added onto his insurance.)

After the honeymoon, I wasn't able to work.  It took three to four months for me to recover.  Then right after our first anniversary.  I was injured in a car accident.  So, again, I missed several months of work.  Finally, In March of 06, I found good solid employment.  The only impact on my creidt after the BK was medical bills, and a few missed payments.  2 missed payments due to the seizure.  One missed payment because of the car accident.

I believe it was in 2007, when I discovered myfico.  I have been trying to improve my credit eversince.  I paid all delinquent accounts, and charge offs.  I am currently working lowering my DTI.

[adamseve]

Hi there,

My DH & I got into financial troubles when I became ill with an undiagnosed illness approximately 3 months after we got married.  We were able to maintain for approximately 2 years after I got ill, but in 2004 things hit the fan when my husband's salary dropped by approximately $10-15k.  After that, I lost my job.  Even with insurance, we got loaded with medical bills that we couldn't pay.  Thank God we didn't have lots of debt, only our home, a couple of credit cards, and 3 cars (none of them paid for). 

We saved our home and gave back all of the cars and filed Ch 13 & then converted to Ch 7.  We were both very aware of how important credit was, but without a solid income we just couldn't handle the debt.

To date, I don't have any credit cards, but DH has one.  We have 1 car payment and only our house payment plus the usual & customary bills, i.e., utilities, insurance, grocery, etc.

It's been a struggle and we're not tackling the rebuilding process.

[Anonymous]

I am as old as dirt,almost but I have a young mind.....when I can find it.I had known for years about the 3 CBs.......but thats about all I knew.

I started all my kids a credit file when they were 16 years old. I added them to my CC as an AU. Now my youngest received his first CCs on his own at age 18. By the time he was 21 he had I think 4 CCs  All CL over $5000.  He had NO lates or any derogs!!

Now me wellll  I knew that I had COs (didn't know what they were) and I had a foreclosure.

April 2007, I took youngest to buy a car. I figured he had good credit....what a shock when we were told I had better score then he did.

I saw a show on CNN that was about credit & Fair Isaac. I went online & looked for them. I found this forum and almost went blind reading for 2 weeks. My first mistake was pulling both or our CR...........OMG....I will tell everyone do 1 at a time until you know how to read it & what everything means!!!

Now kids only problem was his UTIL....I got more CCs for him which helped. His scores started at 635  went down to 619 (FICO EQ)  now they are  695

Mine, now that was work!!  I still have the foreclosure but all COs are gone & thank God no baddies.

My FICO EQ  went from 653 to 754 ( I also added 7 new CC)

If not for the help that I received from the forum members on this site I hate to think of where our scores would be!

[n2win]

Been reading awhile , then, when I was able to get a decent rate on my refinance I got interested in the FICO scoring.

My credit was excellent until my husband and I split up many years ago, leaving me with three children (under the age of five!) and has been bad (horrible) (well, I assumed so anyway) since the following happened:

1)  I filed bankruptcy and my mortgage was foreclosed ($20,000 second at a gazillion interest rate with a five year balloon, go figure...)

2)  Finished college but made an unfortunate career choice and couldn't make my student loan payments...

3)  Refused to believe my fiance was terminal and invested way too many of my resources in a lost cause (but my heart was in the right place...!)

4)  Got behind on a couple of CC and finally just gave up...

Hoping maybe I'm not beyond redemption, but, if I am, well, I've survived so far 

Message Edited by n2win on 05-23-2008 12:06 AM

[Anonymous]

Tanked credit first time around right out of hs when I got every store card going, maxed them all and didn't pay.

Started rebuilding years later, was in a near fatal car accident...tanked again, back to rebuilding...my husband dx'ed with cancer, treatments, final expenses, aftermath and retail therapy, tanked again.

Started rebuilding again, now five years later have pulled up from a very dismal in the 300s picture to some prime cards; keeping some bottom feeders for now, will ditch soon.

Am at a point where pre-credit crunch I would have been fine for some private student loans to supplement what I can probably get in grants and staffords to enter the MSW program in fall of 2009 (at my very non-traditional age I am going into my final year in the BSW program), but now my scores have to come up more. Still hoping the school offers enough of a package to get me there without additional borrowing.

I started dating a very dear old friend a year and a half into widowhood, something I never would have foreseen or planned on, it just happened. He passed away in March, and I have so far avoided the retail therapy trap.

Uti down to 10%, but will take a hit mid summer after vacation....then will work towards bringing it down again.

Last 30 date late due to fall off 2/09. That was just a stupid move on my part, pulled a stack of envelopes out of the car door pocket at the drive up mail box, missed the JCPenney payment...

[Anonymous]

My credit downfalls.

Got Married first time in 1997, divorced a yr and a half later. We had stopped living together after about 6 months, but divorce process lasted about a yr due to custody fight. After a long custody battle ( yr or so), lost a car to repo,lost my house to foreclosure,$25,000 in lawyer fees, and found out the baby wasn't mine. Talk about rock bottom! I didn't even look at my credit at that point, I knew it was bad and I figured out of sight out of mind.

I got married again in 2002, we got pregant on our honeymoon. I joke with my wife that she smuggled our son in from mexico. Anyway, she was placed on bedrest for 6 months, and could not work. Repo here we go again. There was just no way we could keep up with all the mounting medical bills and rent and two car notes. Our son was five weeks early, and had to be placed on a ventilator in NICU for 8 days. This devasted our finances. He is perfectly healthy now, and is worth every penny! lol

We did everything we could to keep the creditors at bay, and bought our first house in 2006, but with extremely high interest. The first time I really looked at my scores and started trying to correct some things was in March this year. WOW! All of my scores were in the low 5's.

With all the advice from this forum I have now raised them into the mid 6's with EQ being my highest at 669! I have two more baddies coming off anytime. We have not been late on any payments in 2 yrs, and are refinancing soon. I can definately say I am now a Ficoholic!

[Anonymous]

Nasty and expensive divorce/custody battle 2003-2007. Many late payments on student loans and CC's at that time. Sold home and gave all proceeds to attys. Also 2 collection acct's from medical bills for her the I wasn't aware of. In retrospect it probably would have been better for me to file BK but I figured it wouldn't have erased my student loans anyways so I held on and took the dings. In rebuild mode now and have had 2 successful GW's for the medical bills. If I can get my Ex FICO above 600 I can qualify for a loan that would get me 100% caught up...which would raise my score hopefully enough to buy a house for me and my 6-yr old twin boys (that I have full custody of!!!). Broke but hopeful.

[llecs]

DW and I finished up college with over $20k in CC, COs, and other non-student debt. We knew that bad info stays on your CR for 7 yrs so we decided to apply for only what we needed. The first indication came with our first car loan stuck at a 13% rate for 5 yrs. We tried for CCs to have for "emergencies" but were declined for most everything. We then got our 2nd car loan at 19.9% for 6 stinkin' yrs. We knew then our credit was very bad.

We went on a credit hiatus from 2003 on. Didn't app for anything new. We figured that the bad stuff would age off and we would start with a squeaky clean CR and a high score (don't know how I thought that). All the while old debts resurfaced and had been served a debt summons no fewer than a half dozen times from 2000-2006 (surprisingly, none showed on our CR).

Last Aug. 1, DW and I decided to tackle the monster. The monster was a med-sized box full with pages and pages of collection notices and court documents from 1994 to 2007. We used Excel to track every single document, categorized it, tracked dates, acct numbers, contact info, amounts due, etc and calculated our debts at about $15,000. We also pulled each CR directly from the CRA and focused on what was reporting, which was about $5000 at the time.

We also noticed inconsistencies and double reporting on our CRs. I searched around and found several other forums that talked about credit repair. Took a while to weed the bad ones out, but most everyone referenced MyFICO. So, I went there in mid-August and began our repair journey. Started with scores in the low to mid 500s in August and bumped it to mid to high 600s now. We started with 0 CCs for DW and I and now have 17 between us. We started with 8 or 9 CAs reporting and now down to 2 and started with 6-7 COs and down to 3 between us. It is a fun journey.

[Anonymous]

I started out at 18-19 with 8 maxed out store cards. I got those cleared up and paid off but some had gone to collections. Few years later, i got my first car note but didn't have someone with me who could inform me properly on buying a car. I got royally hosed... went in without my score and signed a 60 month loan at 22.75% interest because "I could afford the payment and it was the car of my dreams" :::smacks head::: September 11th happened, and my income dropped huge! I acquired a few medical bills as well, and maxed out two more cards. It's been a stupid struggle that i never took seriously until about 6 months ago. I put off paying my collections because my then-boyfriend was going to propose and we'd get everything straightened out. He left, and i decided i wanted to figure this out without help and stop making bad decisions. I paid off $8000 in bills in 4 months(I am now debt free!), and pulled my score in April which was 480-520 between the three. My car was 11 years old and getting in some trouble, so i found this site and started working on getting my scores up. I'm now in 590-610 after a month of disputes on my reports. I went from owing $8000 in debt, with many collections calling me and a median 500 score, to $0 past due debt (i owe $107 on a credit card but make small payments to boost my payment history) and a median score around 600. No one would have approved me for a loan(or they would have financed at 21-23%) but i learned about credit unions and secured my new car i got few days ago at 13% for 60 months. It's a 2007 Ford Focus (only 8 months old) and i got it financed for around $11,000 with just my trade in. The past 6 months have been a huge improvement for me as far as my understanding of credit. The new car loan is not prime but i can re-fi in a year. I'm still working on getting some of the 8-10 collection accounts GWed, and in a year, hopefully i can start getting some prime cards to boost my score as well. I owe so much to this site! I'm really proud of my progress because of the knowledge here Message Edited by AerosmithCat on 05-24-2008 06:12 AM

Message Edited by AerosmithCat on 05-24-2008 06:13 AM

[Anonymous]

hey kahuna, can I ask if you are the same kahuna from the Dad's Divorce forum??