Long story short, I was well on my way to getting my credit back on track. From scores in the high 400s to low 500s to above 600 across the board. I had several credit cards that were boosting my score steadily, plus a new car I was able to finance at 6.5% interest (not awesome, but far better than the 29% I had qualified for before that). This was back in 2016.
Queue a messy divorce, a sudden need to move with minimal funds, and life just basically going straight into the crapper for a solid year. It was a struggle just to keep my head above water and put food on the table/keep a roof over our heads.
All but one of those cards were defaulted on and eventually closed. I didn't have the time or energy to care about my credit anymore and, honestly, I just kind of gave up for a while there. The one card that I didn't default on or close was just because I never used it, so it had a zero balance to begin with (store card). I ended up needing to do a "voluntary repo" on the car I had bought just a couple of years prior and bought a much older car off my brother to use instead. To put it mildly, it wasn't a good year.
Fast forward to now - things have settled down considerably. I'm making better money, I'm settled into a great relationship, and I'm finally at a place financially (and emotionally) where I can start putting all those pieces back together again and focus on trying to rebuild my credit that I completely destroyed...again. My partner and I would like to buy a house in a couple of years, so that's my main motivation right now. Same motivation I had before, really, but I'm actually glad I didn't get to the point of home ownership with my ex hah.
Finally mustered up the nerve to check my scores some months back after years of burying my head in the sand. It was...not good. Back to square one with scores in the high 400s - low 500s. I could kick my past self for all of this, but that wouldn't really do any good now. Since then, I've opened an OpenSky card and maintained my one store card I never used. Also added my rental payment account to my credit reports and started up a Selflender "loan." That's really all I can do at this point, as far as new, good credit goes, because I burned my bridges with Capital One, Discover, Comenity Bank and Synchrony Bank, and I also don't want to kill my already-low scores with inquiries. Been keeping my balances low on my cards and paying everything religiously.
I've also started paying off collections accounts little by little, several of which have offered to remove the accounts from my report once paid or settled. A few won't, but I'm still paying them off, one by one. The hard one is going to be the $11k I owe on that voluntary repo but I'll get there eventually. So far my "fako" scores are now in the high 500s, pushing getting into the 600s again. Not sure yet what actual FICO scores look like, since I'm waiting a bit to pay for that access, once I feel like I've made some solid progress.
Any advice for doing anything I'm not already doing? We'll need to get a new car sometime after summer (this one is on its last leg) but I'm seriously considering doing something like Fair (basically like long-term leasing/renting vs taking on a loan) so I'm not adding a large loan onto my report right now - but not really sure if that's the right way to go. Any other thoughts?
I know I'll get there eventually, it's just hard not to be frustrated right now. Slow and steady wins the race, right?
