I ended up with a bad score for most of my adult life. I received two credit one credit cards with limits of $300 and $600, maxed them, and maybe made one or two payments. I also didn't pay a last cell phone bill. At 31, my husband and I wanted to finally buy a house. We didn't see a problem with living off cash as that is what we had always done, but our mortgage broker said we needed a credit score of 620 to qualify for an fha loan.
He suggested my husband get a secured credit card from Open Sky, so he did.
I ended up getting an offer from Capital One for $300. Then, as we made payments we got more offers. A few months later, I got an offer from Mercury for a card with a 3k limit. At this point I had a few store cards through Synchrony, 2 capital one Quicksilver cards, and the Mercury.
My score started building pretty quickly. The Mercury card auto raises the limit yearly. Im at $5500 on my Mercury, $1500 on a Cap One, $600 on the other Cap One (I need to just close that), 30k on a BoA, 16k on the OneKey (my newest and fave), 5k on a BoA business card, 20k with Care Credit, and a few more for a total of 129k in available credit by myself.
I reached 800 on my Fico 8 last week! I couldn't believe it. I thought it would take 20 years! My lowest score is Experian at 788.
I'm really proud of me. We are at a place in life where we can build our dream home on a couple acres in the country when I get out of grad school in 2 years.
I came from the projects with a disabled mother (epilepsy) and no financial education. Im at 3% credit utilization because I've spent this last year paying off debts. I am super proud of us.
I just wanted to let you all know that it seems impossible, but it is possible to come back from low scores after messing up for years. You've got this.
This website gave me hope when I was curious or confused throughout those years. This is my first day signing up. I wanted to instill the same hope that was instilled in me when I thought it was hopeless.
