Terry's Path To Credit Repair

I'm going to tell you the story of a friend of mine named Terry. Terry is a single woman supporting herself and in a professional job. She's smart, honest and responsible. So how can she be the object of a credit repair case study? Because financial problems can happen to anyone. All it takes is an illness, a lost job, an accident or an unexpected financial problem and a lack of knowledge and planning.

Like most people, Terry had pristine credit when she started out. She rented her first house, had a car payment she could afford and didn't buy much on credit other than the items that got paid off monthly like gasoline. By the time she was ready to buy her first starter home, she had a small down payment saved and was able to qualify for a decent interest rate because her credit scores were in the 'Good' range, which is over 700 points.

Terry had a good job and by her 30's she was making a great salary. She traded up to a larger home that she could afford at the time, had another car that was close to paid off and credit charges that she was carrying forward as she furnished and improved her new home. It was a stretch, but it felt good to make a home for herself on her own efforts.

Two years after moving to the new home, the economy took a dive. Terry had put a large down payment onto her new home with the proceeds from her 1st home but suddenly she was upside down in her mortgage. She was not terribly concerned as she planned to stay in her home for years to come. Then she lost her job. As her company downsized, her entire department was cut. She got two months pay and her 401K as she got sent out the door.

Selling her home was not really an option and still in her early 30's, Terry had not saved a large nest egg to see her through times like these. She was caught flat footed. It took 8 months to get a new job. She took some certification training at the local college, used some of her 401K and worked hard to find a new job. Payments fell behind as she juggled between bills, the IRS put a lien on her accounts for the 401K penalties, and one of the credit card companies sent her to collections. Now she had a history of late payments, a lien and collections on her credit. She made one more mistake. She got frustrated with a credit card company that kept raising the interest rate making it harder and harder for her to pay the balance off so she cancelled the card. She kept paying off the balance and thought she was doing the right thing but it hurt her credit. It turns out the amount of credit you have available to you if one of the things that ADDs point to your score, so by closing her credit card, she had less credit available. Her score fell into the 'Poor' range, to the mid 500's.

When she finally got a job it took months to get back on her feet. The debts she owed had increased their interest rates when her payments were late, and she had back payments to make on her home and car. She rode it out and counted her blessings as she also counted her pennies and worked to financially recover. After a year in her new job, the housing market had recovered and her home had appreciated enough that she thought a second or a refi would help her consolidate her debts and give her some breathing room. She was told she didn't qualify for a loan because of her scores. So Terry did what she has always done, she put her mind to solving the new problem and set out to raise her credit score enough to qualify for a decent loan and interest rate.

Terry reviewed her credit reports and found late payments she could challenge. She wrote letters to all three credit agencies asking them to review the items and she wrote to the creditor asking them to review and reconsider the late payment reports. The credit agencies have to confirm each item within 30 days or remove it. Terry got lucky. Two late payments were removed as inaccurate and one collection got removed because they couldn't be confirmed in 30 days since they were being investigated at the collections company at her request as well. Next she set up a new credit card at her bank where she had her checking accounts and 401K. They gave her a secured line of credit based on her other assets, but it showed as a positive 'credit available' for her to use, which it was. Terry also sold some skis, bikes, furniture and books so she could apply the money to her debts and pay them off faster. A few months later she had managed to raise her score to 620, in the 'Fair' range and qualify for a good mortgage she could afford that also took out enough to pay off all her outstanding debt.

From what she learned she has continued to work on rebuilding her credit score and save for a 'rainy' day because she definitely doesn't' want to go through this ordeal again.