1. Hubby was hospitalized for his PKD. 2. Lost his job as a result. 3. Got evicted (not on CR's) 4. Paid for everything with the 2 CC's I had ($1K) 5. Never paid them cause food and rent became the priority. 6. Found creditnet and straightened my act out.
Lets see, when I was 20 years old and working making about 20k living at home I had: Amex Green Amex Gold Amex Platinum ($300 annual fee) Quicken Visa Peoples Bank Visa Sears Radio Shack Cellular Phone (this was 10 years ago when it was expensive) Mobil Shell Exxon Texaco Discover and some more I cant think of.. Basically I got tired of paying and just stopped paying, luckily no one sued me and most of the baddies have gone away. I got back into credit 2 years ago and have never been late since. Guess I was just stupid and did everything you are not supposed to do...
went to college and came out with a 496...things are getting better now, but i lost my job in may and my debt went up.
My credit is good now ( low 700's ) but it used to be in the toilet. At 18 I bought a new 5.0 Mustang. Then I HAD to buy a new stereo for it totalling almost 5k. We have tons of snow here so I bought a new truck for the winter. I applied for 24 credit cards at one time and got 17 of them. I racked them all up not worrying about how they would be repaid. I then lost my job and got a new one but for 58% of the pay. My divorce cost me almost 30K. I also had a job at a shop that went bankrupt. We lost a months wages, back pay and severance. Could not get unemployment because they never submited the deductions and did not give the employees a proper pay stub.
Hi So from the looks of things creditors love granting credit to ones with fresh clean *new* slates...good golly 15+ acct for a 20yo with a new job yikes.....my credit was never that good hehehe feels now like I was born a risk... But does that mean it will be easier to get credit once all the collections /charge offs are off...(ok maybe a duh questions) even if scores are low from new accts. I have made great strides in deleating and letting things roll off still my scores in the mid to high 5oo's (Eq-567 E-Loan- 585 EX- ?). I have a couple relativly new accts and a couple stubborn collections but now I'm getting the ol' too many inquries blah blah...as a reason for turn down for others... Catch -22...need credit to get credit I have more to learn... Can you buy patience anywhere ? Jamie
1. Never had financial training in my youth; never saved a penny in my life and never learned how to save a dollar to make two dollars. 3. Got to college with my mom's AmEx gold and thought I was "da bomb". Got a Student Citi and student Associates, listing my student loan money as my income. Got a Texaco and Chevron the same way. 4. Bought clothes, pizza, and other consumables with these cards -and paid the minimums when I felt like it. Just enough to keep them from cancelling the cards. Mom paid the AmEx as a back up. 5. After graduation, got overwhelmed with student loan bills and $15/month CC minimums (sad, I know) and just stopped paying EVERYTHING for one year. 6. Began paying CC bills for fear of being sued. They direct debited my checking account until the CC bills were paid off. 7. Dated someone briefly, and became ashamed that if we married I could never buy a house with him b/c of my credit issues. Couldn't even broach the subject with him. 8. Dated someone else, told him of my credit issues, and when he didn't shoot me down, I found the courage to start paying the defaulted student loans and one last CC bill. 9. One year later, as my student loans were ready for rehab, did a discussion board search for credit and ran across CreditNet. By far the best financial decision of my life. _______________________ NOW: 1. I pay in cycle in full on new purchases. I am snowballing the rest of my car and CC debt at 0% interest. 2. I am doing all the reading I can on living below my means and investing to turn one dollar into two dollars. 3. I am about to set up for a employer matching program to give additional funds to my retirement. If I can learn anything - it would be how to live on less than I do now, and how to turn a dollar into two - or even five.
Greg, There's a good question, thanks for asking it. I'm curious, not my business of course, and will respect your decision if you don't want to answer... I've been to your sites and read your postings over the last 6 months to year or so and you have tons of information, research, tenacity and endurance, that I've learned a lot from. Do you have personal credit problems that got you on this path that led to your passion? For me, it was having a heart attack while being on medical leave, then fired because the surgical complications weren't timely for my employer, grrrrrrrr. This thread shows, if we're representative of the general american population, that it's really true that most of us are 1 paycheck away from financial disaster. Good advice on the emergency funds, Butch. Sassy
techman, I feel your pain! I was 20 and decided to trade in the reliable (and paid off) Mazda that my folks bought me for a new Camaro SS. Next thing I did was rack up $20 grand in extra student loans, which financed my tire and tit fund (tm). Two years later I graduated $35 grand behind, my checking account was in the red, and the first thing I did was go out and buy another brand new car, a $38,000 Grand Cherokee Limited no less. Doesn't get much stupider than that, but I didn't know any better at the time. Now almost six years later, everyone is getting their money (slowly but surely), and I own my car. A cheap, 5-year old Honda.
Great advice, Marci. As for books - Rich Dad, Poor Dad is suppose to be very good and the Millionaire Next Door (I think that is the correct title). Haven't read the MND or RDPD yet, but both have gotten pretty good reviews. Dani
Dani, Both of those books are great, from what I've heard. Alas, my bookshelf is full of unread books, and I am making myself wait before buying any new ones. But when I do,I'll definitely go to Half.Com and A1Books.Com first. These are the best sites on the web for bookworms... Thanks for reminding me about them,
How about student loans. I graduated law school with 120k in student loans and payments of $1300 a month. No way no how could I make those payments. Once you miss a few, you know your credit is screwed, so you really don't care at that point, and you let everything go. Bad credit is really a death spiral once it starts. If you can take the steps at the outset to mitigate the damage, negotiate lower payments etc... then you can keep on track. People with good credit will work a lot harder to keep it good. If you have bad credit, you lose the incentive to work the system, Of course this only applies to the general poplulation. Credit netters work a lot harder than most, good or bad credit.
Here is my story. I got married and had a baby at 16 years old. I finished high school and went to school and got my LPN License. During this time I got pregnant again. I had a very complicated pregnancy with placenta previa and was put on complete bed rest from 28 weeks on. This portion happened to be a blessing in hiding because it was then I realized that I was a good artist. Unfortunately I also had a horrible experience with my second child during my 37th week. Unfortunately I hemorrhage d and had 3 transfusions during the delivery of my daughter. Everything turned out well and I was released from the hospital 2 weeks later with another beautiful healthy baby girl. My husband at the time was just recovering from a motorcycle accident and the only insurance that we had was COBRA. This resulted in just over 210,000 in medical bills. Fortunately I was able to get emergency Medicaid because of my husband being off work which left me with appx 37,000 in medical bills. Being young and very uneducated with credit I believed that my hospital bill payment should come before some of my other bills. This resulted in several SMALL baddys on both my husbands and my reports. I will finish paying off the hospital in December. I could have filled for BK and perhaps maybe that is what I should have done, but they saved my life. They gave me a chance to know and love my new daughter, continue loving my oldest daughter and last give birth to my son David. Anyway....that is my story. The smaller bills seemed unimportant when I was working on the bigger debt. That was my biggest mistake. Even worse...the hardest thing to remove from my reports was a PAID $16.99 collection for a magazine. Life is strange aye?
wolverine, I'm applying for law school for fall 2003...and I will be borrowing to pay the tuition. As an older nontrad taking on those loans was/is a big concern. I'm applying to a part time program...so the federal loans will cover my tuition. But I plan on taking a public service law job after I graduate...while it won't pay me the big buckeroos...it will pay a living and some of my student loans if I make a 2 year commitment. I visit alot of pre-law forums and I don't think those kids realize when they brag about being accepted to a tier 1 school that $150K in loans will be a big nut to swallow post law school. Plus some of them still have undergrad loans. I think that it should be against the law for schools to grant financial aid in the form of govt and private loans without counseling the prospective student as to what their future debt paying life will be. What do you think??? clc
The schools are suposed to have entrance and exit (too late!) financial aid couseling. I don't know how many schools actually do though. If you look on the usdept of ed website, they discuss it. The school I went to did have this but the enterance counseling happened after I was enrolled for a year - that's when I found out how high my loan payments would be for the next 10 or 20 years depending on how I financed them. One of my regrets is not paying the interest on my SLS loans which accumulates while you're in school. It was more important for me to go to dinner or something but I would have saved quite a bit of money that way. A little tip for anyone taking on an SLS loan. It's not that much monthly but you save a lot later.
And I did read The Millionaire Next Door. The book mainly compares how millionaires manage their money compared to the rest of the population. What stuck w/ me the most is that many millionaires have a Sears card but far fewer have the special Amexes/Diner's Clubs, etc.
They do counseling before and after, but most 21-22 year olds like me at the time don't think much about it. You think what the heck I'll be a lawyer, I can afford anything. Then you realize that you have totally lost your freedom, you can't take the job you want because you need to have an extra $1500 a month to pay your loans off. I wound up at a big firm with a high paying job that I absolutely hated. It's like having a big mortgage and no house. My loans are paid off now, but they just about ruined the last ten years of my life. I wouldn't wish the experience on anyone.
Butch and clc, It's just not law school where public service work can get some student loans forgiven. A friend of mine's daughter is finishing an M.S. in nursing . If she accepts a job with the public health service, they'll forgive about a third of her student loans in return for a 2 year committement. The catch is she would be assigned to an extremely rural ,proverty stricken area of the deep south. There are only 2 doctors in the entire county. Her concerns are the isolation, a long way from home, etc. She's undecided at the moment but, it sounds like a heck of a deal for the right sort of personality.
What would you think is the most popular auto for millionaires? Lexus, Caddi, Lincoln, Ferrari? It's Ford
