1 reply to this topic

[Help-Down-n-out]

Hello all, (posted this in Bk and in credit because some questions needed to be asked in both, posted in FC to share my story)

Will make a long story as short as I can. In 1999 we bought our home 30 year fixed. In 05 got ill had several surgeries. I lost my job and our income for a family of 5 dropped 50%. Could not get unemployment as lost my job because of medical had no temp disablity. I waited 13 months for long term SSA/ssi. I fell behind on mortgage and bank would not work with us. The sick thing is we fell behind because we sent a payment in and it was posted on the 17th which added late fee , the bank than said we have to pay the late fee with the next months payment being short on funds did not do so and they returned the payment. That caused us to become two months behind by the time we got notice. The next month having to add extra fees we ran late paying it again and it posted on the 20th guess what the bank sent that payment back and by that time we were 3 months behind and when we went to pay the full total(almost 4 months in) we were hit with fees because they started FC. Contacted AG and after several weeks was total any payment not made in full they do not have to take.

After getting to the point of FC I (we)did chapter 13. 1 year later we get notice our lbank forgot to add fees guess what our payment plan jumped by over 300.00 a month extra. Now in 06 we had drained our savings keeping up with what we could. Used 401K and almost all of that 401k at that.Our 13 was dismissed after we were told we now could not afford our payments. Wanting to keep our home we used a so called holding company. Guess what it was a scam our lawyer was the one who said it was fine until we could refi. Guess what they did not help!!! (yes we were wrong but stress makes you do some foolish thing). O7 we find out they stopped paying our mortgage. We could not sell as they also were on the deed, could not rent it for same reason and we had to keep paying both them and bank or come up with the fees to sue. We could not do anything but let the bank FC. 08 filed chapter 7 thank god better lawyer. We are renters now. ok, these are my questions

how do we restart our credit.
we have a secured BOA what other should we look for
credit scores are 400's and 500's, how long before that is better use to be 700's
Having CRA correct was is IIB so many errors it scares me
EQ is showing last late payment was the month of 08 we filed bk. hope they correct that as last late was in 07.

what do we do from this point on?

Can we ever buy a home again? we did not plan for this and at 42 who thinks they will be unable to work again. The sad thing is we are now doing better and pay the same a month as the mortgage. We have a nice savings again and never had high cc debit the highest was 5000.00 now have none. never had auto payments but alot of medical which is also gone thanks to bk.

The bank did get a judgement on us but that is gone from the bk too, Was told for 700.00 the lawyer can get that removed, should we do that?

I guess because I am new at this any info you can give would be helpful!!!!!

Thank you.

What I have had to deal with is nuts and my bank did not work with me in any manner they just made it harder. I hope the new laws help the people of today because they did nothing for me. And for you the people in the middle of this please understand it is hard but it will be better someday.

[Brian B The Loan Professor]

2 yrs post bk and 3 yr post foreclosure for financing a new home.

Just start slow and make steady and consistent payments if someone will give you credit use it but dont abuse it.

It will take a lot of patience.

Brian