I love reading about other people's rebuilds, so I wanted to jump in and share mine in hopes that it may help and/or motivate others who are just starting their rebuild or who are feeling frustrated or overwhelmed with the process. It IS entirely possible to bounce back from credit issues!
Around this time last year, I had an Experian FICO 8 score of 548. My TransUnion and Equifax were not very far off from that. NOT good. Unfortunately, my husband had a series of health issues and was out of work on short-term disability for several extended periods of time, which caused us to fall behind as we were trying to live on my salary alone, plus the small amount that he was getting from his short-term disability benefits, which only paid a little over half of his normal salary. We had to default on our mortgage in 2019 in order to obtain a loan modification. My husband's name is not on our mortgage (only mine is), so his credit didn't take the hit from that, but mine did. Anyhow, my credit was a mess. I had 5 collections on my credit report, plus the payments that we had to miss on our mortgage in order to qualify for the loan mod.
I really started taking my rebuild seriously a year ago. We really need to buy a larger home. We have seriously outgrown our current home that we bought almost 15 years ago and the lack of space is becoming a huge problem, especially where both my husband and I work from home. It was the perfect house for us when we were much younger and buying our first home, but it's no longer meeting our needs, so I knew that I had to start tackling my credit issues head on so we could secure a new mortgage for a larger home. I had two collections from IC Systems, so I disputed those and, much to my amazement, I was able to get them both deleted almost immediately! I also had two other collections (I can't remember who they were from), but I disputed those as well and, much to my amazement again, those also got deleted! I have no idea how I got so lucky with my disputes, but I wasn't about to question it! This left me with only one very small collection on my Experian and TransUnion reports from an old Fingerhut account from 2016. I tried disputing it, but that one was not removed. I really couldn't complain since I had just gotten my 4 other collections deleted, leaving me with only this one small collection account to deal with. So, I sent an email to the collection agency that was handling this account and asked if they would agree to settle for $75 in exchange for deletion from my credit reports. They agreed! They sent me a link to pay the $75 and it was deleted from my reports about a week or so later. Now, I have ZERO collections across all 3 bureaus!
The only negative item that I have left on my Experian and TransUnion reports is a Verizon Wireless charge-off that I know for a fact I do not owe. We had an account with Verizon for a whole 24 hours back in the spring of 2020, but we ended up immediately canceling it and switching back to T-Mobile because the service with Verizon was so terrible in our area. After closing the Verizon account, we had problems with them continuing to bill us. I had to deal with the Verizon Executive Relations office to get them to stop billing the account and to remove all charges. I still have the email that they sent me in May of 2020 stating that the account was closed, that all charges had been removed, and the account had a zero balance and would not incur any further charges. However, about 6 months later, they hit my credit report claiming that I owe over $2k. I disputed it with all 3 breaus, but was only able to get it removed from Equifax. It remains on my Experian and TransUnion. After emailing and calling the Verizon executive office multiple times, they continued to ignore my messages and sent me a cease and desist letter last summer telling me to stop calling and emailing the excecutive office. So, I'm about to mail them a certified letter threatening legal action if they fail to remove this slanderous charge-off from my Experian and TransUnion credit reports. They never said I couldn't mail them a letter, so I'm going for it!
All that aside, in the past year alone, I have been able to raise my Experian FICO 8 score 150 points!!!! Currently, it's at 698. My TransUnion is at 682 and my Equifax is at 679. I just paid off all but one of my credit cards last night, so my utilization will be dropping significantly and I expect a nice increase from that. However, the most exciting part of this story is that I just got approved for two new credit cards and I am no longer stuck with "toy" limits. Last week, I was approved for both a Discover It Cash Back Rewards card with a $5k CL and I also was approved for a Capital One Quicksilver World Elite Cash Back Rewards Mastercard with a $6k CL! Both of these cards have zero interest for 15 months and no annual fee. On top of that, the CL on my Capital One Platinum card that I've had for about 6 months was just increased from $300 to $1000 and my Target Redcard just increased my CL from $400 to $900, which is pretty darn good for a store card. I can't even explain how amazing this feels. During my rebuild journey, I've had to take out several cards with toy limits of anywhere between $300 and $500, which definitely helped me a great deal as far as reestablishing a positive payment history, but being able to "graduate" to much better cards with significantly higher limits and far better terms is a feeling that I can't even explain. Also, I have just been preapproved for a no-money down USDA mortgage loan, so my husband and I can now start shopping for a new home and put our current home on the market!
So, if you are feeling discouraged and overwhelmed with your rebuild and are feeling like it's not possible, do not give up! This is not something that will happen overnight. It took me a full year of very hard work to get here and it wasn't all easy. I'm STILL on this journey in hopes of one day achieving an 800 score. It requires a great deal of patience and persistence, but it can be done!
Starting Score: 461