A little background about myself. The first time I had any awareness about credit scores was in 1999. I bought my first house and in the process of applying for the mortgage, I learned I had a credit score over 800. (I can't remember what it was, but I think 826. It was the highest score my brother ever saw, and he is a mortgage broker.) I got married, converted that house to a rental and moved in with my husband. My husband is notsogreat with credit. I had no idea. We purchased a home together and moved. We weren't ready to sell our other house, so we took out second mortgages on that home and a vacation home to come up with the down payment. A few years later, my husband was unable to work for six months. We have separate bank accounts, and he was in charge of paying the two seconds and I was in charge of our home mortgage. He wasn't able to continue to make payments and hid that from me. Our old home was foreclosed on. The vacation home got a couple of lates, but was spared.
I guess I should have paid more attention when one of my cards was dropped from a $20K limit to $600 that something was amiss. But it was in the midst of all the credit tightening and I didn't much care. I've always used credit cards like debit cards. I've never paid what I don't have. I switched from using credit at all to just paying cash or using debit.
Two years after the foreclosure, I applied with my credit union for an auto loan. That is when I found out about the foreclosure. Unbelievable. Amazingly, I still got the car loan, which turned out to be a great choice for rebuilding credit even if I was unwittingly doing that. I paid off the five year loan in 4.25 years.
Fast forward to last October. A friend recommended that I apply for a rewards card so I could afford to travel with my family. Sounded like a great idea. I applied for and got a Chase Sapphire Preferred with a $9K CL, bringing my total CL on revolving credit to $9600. I was so excited, that a month later, I applied for and was denied the Chase Ink Plus. This was the first denial of a credit card ever. Since the November HP, I haven't applied for any credit. I did set up a Chase Business Checking account in December and have my rents automatically deposited via ACH. So at least Chase now has a record of my business revenues.
In December, I pulled my head out of the sand and started using Credit Karma. I found 9 collections stemming from a car I sold. The subsequent owner got 8 parking tickets and then the car was towed. Total amount was $4K. I disputed all the tickets and my score shot up. I knew the towing one was going to be harder, so I was working on getting proof of transfer of ownership. At that point, my husband made a mistake and got a 30-59 late on the vacation home. Ugh.
My husband wrote a letter to the creditor about the towing collection explaining that it wasn't my debt and threatened to sue for slander of credit. That collection was removed from the credit reports. I'm left with one recent 30-59, which we are going to try to get removed, which is dated January 2016. I have two 120s from the vacation home that will fall off in January 2017. The foreclosure has aged off my reports.
Here are my short term goals:
1. Refi Jumbo loan to a 30 year fixed. It is adjustable now, which has been fine, but want the security of a fixed. We only plan to live here 4 more years, but fixed would give us the flexibility to stay a little longer if we wanted to. I feel like I really shouldn't attempt this until January or February 2017, even if I get that 30-59 removed sooner than that. I want to qualify for the jumbo on my own financials and not use my husbands income, and therefor, less than ideal credit.
2. I want the following credit cards in order of priority: Chase Ink Plus, Citi Costco, Chase Freedom, Chase United. I really want the Citi Costco, but I'm afraid that it will delay me getting approved for the Chase cards that I need. The goal is to get my family of 4 to Europe. I have about 96K points and I'll need at least 240K to get the RT tickets to get there. I have 3 HPs in the last 24 months (2 from Chase, one from Directv.)
3. Get all scores over 750
4. Get remaining co-signed loan for vacation property out of my name so I am in control of my own credit.
Long term goals:
1. Get my credit scores over 800 and keep them there.
2. Hopefully help my husband repair his credit.
If you have read through this novel, you get a cookie and my appreciation. Any advice/input is welcome.
Current Scores: FICO 8: EQ 715, TU743, EX 762
Starting FICO 8's (7/2016) EQ 715|| TU 743 || EX 762
Current FICO 8's (10/2022) EQ 838|| TU 828|| EX 826
Goal FICO 8's: 780 across the board - Goal met 9/2018;
Next Goal FICO 8's: 800 across the board - Goal met 10/2022
