Fixing my credit?

[Dori79]

I was always told that a good way to build up credit is to make a purchase on a credit card every month and just be sure to pay it off before the statement arrives. I haven't been able to try it for myself yet as I have never been able to get a credit card issued to me due to problems repaying student loans. I am pretty sure though that it will take longer than you have with this method to build your credit score. Good Luck

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

Reading this thread with interest. My credit is in the toilet because of homelessness, bankruptcy and some medical problems. Nothing new for a while, but trust me when I say I didn't add my name to the house's loan because I didn't want to risk us getting it.

Anyhoo ... I got on the phone and called my cell phone company to see how often they report my good payments. Answer: NEVER. They only report late, missed, or complete lack of payments. WTH?!?! That's the main reason I didn't change providers ... because I've been with them since 1999 or so and haven't had any missed or late payments for a very long time.


So I called other cell phone places. Got the same answer. They don't report good payment practices.

ARGH!


Last month I got a secured credit card. Put about $20 a month and will pay it off every month.

And it's about time I got another free copy of my credit reports. Will watch this thread with interest because I may need a better credit rating soon.

 

[lorihadams]

I had credit issues a while back and now ours are in the high 700s and lower 800s (hubby). We have a credit card that we use just for gas. We put all our gas on it for the month and then pay it off every month. I had a lot of debt and consolidated everything through a company that does debt consolidation and waited tables for 3 years and all my income went towards paying off my student loans and those credit card debts. We essentially lived off my hubby's income for those 3 years, and we also paid off a car during that time as well with my income.

Just paying things on time and having a revolving line of credit that you use and pay off every month will help. When we went to purchase our first home we were shocked when they told us what our credit scores were.

You have to budget more than the minimum payment on your debts every month or you'll never get out of it. We have paid less on months that it is tight but we always try to pay more than the minimum.

Just having another job that was solely to pay those debts off really helped. We knew that all my money from that went towards those bills and nothing else. We made it work.

Good luck, don't pull your credit score too often cause that will make it go down as well.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I am not a very trusting person and therefore come up with lots of conspiracy theories with no help at all, so I am always afraid to buy something too pretty and then being at the mercy of my employers who I might not 100% trust or the banks, that can change payments, etc....therefore, I am with a pretty good score, myself. Even my husband who has had his identity stolen at least 5 times that we are aware of, somehow has a good score, but I am still considering your situation.
Okay, if I had a deadline of 3 months to fix as much of my problems as I could, I would have to get on the table with all my assets and liabilities and compare all of them and do at least a temporary overhall.
Needless to say, I would do many of the things listed on the topic of "What did you do to save $ today?" I would also consider getting everything I don't absolutely NEED, disconnected. I know that sounds extreme, but look at where you hope to be 3 months down the road. I think I would have to serve beans 2Xs a week and eat lots of leftovers. And I'd walk thru the house turning off switches and even unplugging things.
Honestly, I can save over 200 dollars a month, just by disconnecting the cable, land phone and internet service. With those things off, I can start making small payments on little bills and clean house real fast.
I don't know your exact complete situation, but would you be able to work? DH and I are both employed full time in really easy jobs, but I have a nursing career that I tap into sometimes and I can make more money doing that. Lately I feel I want to work less and make more, so I am taking steps toward that direction. In the meantime, I am not marking my extra deposits from nursing into my checking account....its all part of a game I am playing with myself. I go thru life playing little games with myself to fix everything.
If you only work @ home, can you make your homestead more profitable? Clean house and have a garage sale, kill extra roosters to save on feed, cover windows in the summer and such.
I know this is not what you looking for, but I would hope that in 3 months, you can fix all the issues you have against you. You might even take a temporary job, just so you can tap into your own credit history, while fixing DH's problems. Then you can always quit after you secure your family with a better deal.

 

[lorihadams]

I agree, if you could work part time on the weekends while your hubby works monday to friday then all that money could go towards a specific bill and it will help you establish your own credit. We are alright but my husband works for Verizon and is technically a union employee, even though he doesn't agree with all the union policies. Every 3 years they come up for contract negotiations and we get nervous. We had the conversation the other day about paying as much as we can on our mortgage now so that we can pay it down faster, even though we already turned it over to a 10 yr loan. My BF and her husband have credit scores in the 800s but are in debt up to their eyeballs. They bought an $80,000 camper 2 years ago and a $50,000 truck the year before that. They needed a new truck and invested in a diesal cause they should last longer and needed a fifth wheel for hubby's job so that was justified but the camper was a bit much. They view it as a second mortgage and write off part of it on their taxes. I personally couldn't live like that. She refinances her house at least every 2-3 years and she constantly turns over her balances on to new credit cards when they offer her the zero interest for the initial year. She tries to pay it all off but if she doesn't she just turns over the balance onto a new one when it is close to expiring.

Now, that being said, she has taken some of my advice to cut costs and now packs her lunch, doubled her garden space from last year, installed a clothesline and uses it, and tries to buy all their clothes from thrift stores and has worked out a deal with a friend for hand me downs for her DD. With the money she saves on all of that she is trying to pay down their debt. The thing with them is that they are consistent on their payments every month and they keep one credit card for gas and pay it off every month too. Her personal view is that if TSHF they will let the bank have the camper and that will cut a big chunk of their monthly expenses. I would be nervous if I were her. She is a teacher and usually counts on teaching summer school to help pay off some bills every year, yeah this year they didn't have the money in the budget to pay for summer school. $2400 down the drain. That killed her. Now her husband is scrambling to do side jobs to make some extra money but he hurt his back and there is a very real possibility that he is going to have to have surgery to fix it.

So, I guess I'm saying are you guys doing everything you can do to cut your expenses and pay down your debt? One of the things that the banks really look at when doing a loan is your debt to income ratio. If you haven't considered that you should. The higher your debt to income ratio the less you will get from the bank. Have you looked at different banks, some banks are more willing to do refinancing than others and what one bank will do another one won't so call around and check. The thing is this, don't let all these banks pull your husband's credit score for you cause it could actually cause it to go down. Get them to do an estimate based on what credit score the other bank has already pulled. If you don't ask around, then you don't know what could happen. Get some more quotes from other institutions and see if there is a better deal out there. We did ours through a credit union that specializes in farm loans and that was the best thing we ever did. We got a better rate and a lower term for our mortgage. See, my goats and chickens and ducks paid off!

Ask around and see what else is out there, you may be surprised what another bank is willing to do for you, especially if you have a good history of paying on time.

 

[Wifezilla]

When I first got hubby to listen to Dave Ramsey, he was skeptical. Then stuff seemed to sink in. Dave Ramsey's advice isn't technically "right" if you are looking at it from a purely financial standpoint, but it does account for human behavior. A financial geek will tell you to pay off the highest interest rate debt first. Dave says pay off the smallest AMOUNT first so you feel like you are making progress, and then you "snowball" the money that would have gone to that smaller debt and pay that towards the next highest debt.

Since hubby was a stock broker years ago, he had trouble seeing the Ramsey perspective. And he always though the envelope system was dumb. He uses a coffee can system instead

 

[lorihadams]

That's funny WZ!

When we were saving up for our honeymoon my husband thought I was crazy for putting 10-20% of everything I made every day (waitressing) into a jar to go towards our honeymoon. In 7 months I had our honeymoon paid for and extra spending money to boot! He was shocked that it added up to so much over time.

My mom started putting change into a big jar and was planning on taking a weekend trip with my dad....yeah, my mom came up to visit me and when she got back home the jar was almost empty...she had been saving this stuff for years....my dad emptied it all out and used it to put new tires on the truck while she was gone....

Boy was she pissed! Truck looked good though...

To make up for it he bought her a new sewing machine so it all worked out in the end.


I agree with that perspective on paying the debts down. I would pay off the smallest ones first to get them out of the way, it gives you a sense of accomplishment early on and then you can roll that money over to the larger one. I had higher interest credit card debt but my student loans were way less so I paid the minimum amount on my credit cards and was able to pay off my student loans faster first and then dump all that money into my credit cards later. Makes you feel like you don't have so much on your plate at once, it does make a psychological difference.

 

[Homemaker]

It seemed like we were doing alright there for awhile. We really don't have that much outstanding debt. We don't have credit cards. Our van is paid for. No cable, no cell phones, no shopping for fun. We buy second hand items, make our own or do without. I biggest vacation is to the campground and sometime to historical reenactments. But, we both have huge student loans.
Besides that our financial boo-boos are all in the past. My issue is that I don't have any credit. I hate credit cards. I had one once years ago for 1 year. I couldn't keep up with it. I am not financially minded I would rather deal with cash only.
My husband had quite a bit of debt in the past. But, he joined consumer credit counceling and got that taken care of. Or so we thought. When we printed out our credit report there were a lot of little things. But the balance on nearly all of them was paid, but they are still listed on our credit score. I guess since they had an issue with collecting the money in the first place the mark is left on his (our) credit for 7 years. So, we still have 3 more years before his score is wiped completely clean. We called some of the companies, and they said that it would remain on the credit score, even though are debt with them was eventually paid off. His student loan office said they consider his account rehabilitated and any bad marks should be removed from his score. So, that was positive. There are some old medical bills on there. Couldn't even tell what they were from, those were real and we are going to pay those off. There is one that doesn't make any sense to us. It's a 600 charge off for a vehicle we don't even own anymore. We finished paying for that car long ago, how else could we have received the title and then sold it to someone else? Also, 600 dollars is a lot of money why didn't they hound us for that money or take us to court over it? My husband even remembers us getting a final card in the mail from them congratulating us on paying off our car. That is the strangest, we have to call and find out what that one is all about yet. The woman at the bank wasn't really all that helpful. She said she didn't know how to fix a credit score or how long it would take for a repair. She told us to look online. I wrote this thread before I knew all of this. I'm afraid the past has come to bite us in the arse.
So, anyway, we have a lot of skeletons in our closet (filing cabinet?). I know I shouldn't hold on to material things but, I hope we don't lose our home. My husbands grandfather built it. I love this town too. I think I'm going to go back and re-read some of the $ info on here. I apparently still have a lot to learn.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I would think that for the next 3 months, if you aren't late on anything, make slightly more than minimum payment on everything, plus clear off little things and settle the misunderstandings, you would stand a good chance of being accepted by the bank, even if you aren't exactly happy with the deal they make for you....but you can cross that bridge when you get to it. But if you clean house for the next 3 months, maybe you can be in a better way to deal with a possibly crappy financial arrangement when you get it. If Grandpa made the house, you need to keep it....dats final. One more thing.....start praying; but pray like its all going to be Okay....do your part and then some, and trust in the power of your prayer. Keep busy in the meantime. In my religion, we have a name for the type of prayer I would use....which always works, but whatever you do; go for it.

 

[Homemaker]

Thanks Rhoda_Bruce! And thanks to everyone else who has given advise on this thread.