I got online today after an awesome vacation in the Caribbean with my wife to find my February statement from CreditReport.com in my inbox. In February I finally met my longterm credit score goal of 775. Wow… it was sort of a shock. Don’t get me wrong, it feels great, but when you finally hit a goal you’ve been working towards for literally years, it’s almost unbelievable.
It got me thinking about the past few years and all the ups and downs I’ve been through on my personal journey. In particular, I started thinking about how having bad credit affected my self-esteem. Bad credit is something that’s always looming in the background of your life. Maybe you don’t think about it all the time, but when you do, it feels terrible. For me, it was like this mark on my reputation that said “This person cannot be trusted”, even though I knew this wasn’t the truth.
So I suppose in that sense, it does affect your self-esteem. Nobody wants to feel like they can’t be trusted, or they are a deadbeat who doesn’t pay their bills –especially when the whole picture isn’t clear on a credit report. After all, your credit report doesn’t tell the story behind the negative marks. If they did, I’m not sure lenders would care, but if lenders actually knew you I’m sure it would be a different story.
Back when my credit score was in the low 500′s, I applied for my first secured credit card designed to help people rebuild credit. It was an Applied Bank® Secured Visa® Gold Credit Card and I was approved. This was the card I used to really kickstart my credit improvement journey. Within months, my score was up 50 points.
The thing is, because this card is designed specially for people with bad credit, they pretty much approve anyone (as far as I know). Nonetheless, this approval, for me, felt great. After being declined again and again, this little approval gave me the confidence I needed to continue my credit improvement journey. Funny thing…
I would love to hear your stories and comments. Can you relate?
I don't have perfect credit (yet), but over the past couple of years I've gone from bad credit to great credit. I'm here to teach you how to improve your own credit.
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you are a big insperation to me! i love you! please email me back we are learning about bad credit in school and would like to learn more about your struggles.
Thanks Jacob, that’s means a lot.
I can DEFINITELY relate! I have a pretty interesting story – one that includes becoming a mom at a very young age, never being taught the importance of credit, divorce and bankruptcy because of the divorce. Like you said, if creditors really knew our stories, they might look at us differently, but they don’t. And what’s worse, is that really bad credit can affect your overall quality of life. I can’t get a loan anywhere. I can’t even get a cell phone without a huge deposit. Now, at 30, I am starting to learn how to improve my credit. I started doing research and have looked at credit repayment programs – none of which have seemed to work for me yet…but funds are still tight just to try and pay off the debts. I haven’t had time to try and talk to my creditors, but I have started working on paying the bills I have now on time so as to not get anymore bad marks. And I’ve started repaying my student loans – finally! And, ironically, I got the same secured credit card you did. =) Making my payments on time and just keeping up with what I have now. Hoping that things will change, eventually, with the finances, but hoping to take some action on my own to make that happen. Requesting your book, by the way. I’m sure I’ll find some good information in there that I can use to further help me start moving towards better credit.
Thanks for sharing Cathy – I am actually in the process of writing a book. I’ll be writing a post soon with more info!
I wished I had found your website a lot earlier. I am proud to say that I started take a grip on my bad credit situation around November of last year. My score was around 545 and I got approved for an additional car loan due to my income however it was a high interest rate at about 16%. This is when I began to work on inproving it. I started with a service through my bank to monitor the report from all 3 bureaus. I found some very old negative information as well as discrepancies. I immediately filed disputes. Luckily, my collections were all paid. I started paying down on all of my cards. By January, my score was at 595. I would use the cards but then pay off the balances as soon as possible. I started following up with the old collections accounts learning that 2 of the three did not have records any longer and agreed to remove the negative info. I applied for a retail card and got approved for a $1000 limit. Two months afterwards, my score raised to 630. I am still in the process of building but it does feel great to be at 680 right now. My credit union has told me that 1 year from my loan date I can refinance at 3 to 4 % which is a long way from 16%. For all of you that are where I was, keep trying and don’t give up. The exciting part is refreshing the reports at the first of each month to see new progress. Thanks for reading.
Sounds like you’ve made some great progress… Yeah, it feels great.