well...how ever bad your credit rating is, you have made a step in the right direction by finally telling yourself you need to fix it. i know spending money to get the process started does not sound appealing....but trust me it's worth it. my suggestion is get your TU and EQ FICO score from this website which will include your reports. then buy yourself a ream of paper and a roll of stamps. you will need those to start sending out your GW letters to the creditors/CAs that are on your report.
but take care of the easy parts while you're waiting for responses. the "controllable" aspect of fixing your credit. if you have credit cards and have high balance/utilization, get them paid down until your cc debt is very minimal. getting your overall cc utilization to 10% or less will help your score. good luck my friend. this forum will give you help along the way. you just have to be patient.
IMHO your here's what you should do:
1. Get you and your husbands CRs. Review them. Then on seperate sheets of paper seperate your collections, charge offs (CO), judgements, liens, etc.
2. Look at current CCs (credit cards) and see how you can get balance down to 1-9% of total credit limit (CL).
3. Write GW (goodwill), DV (debt validation) and PFDs (pay for deletes). Figure out which collections you are willing to pay the full amount to get deleted. Send GWs for any accounts that are already paid off to include COs. Send them CM (certified mail) it runs about $3 per letter.
4. No more inquires unless absolutely needed. Don't apply for any new credit unless you don't have a credit card at all. Then try gettin a secure credit card.
5. Be patient. It took time to get the credit history that you and your husband have and it'll take time to recover from this. 
