From: dim@soda.csua.berkeley.edu (D. Gerasimatos)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: Realistic?
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 18:27:03 +0000 (UTC)
Originator: dim@soda.csua.berkeley.edu (D. Gerasimatos)

In article <3494b0df.0404220024.19e5575e@posting.google.com>,
Steve  wrote:
>
>Her: She's 28 and makes around $35,000/year. She's about to relocate
>and change jobs (love will do that to you, I guess), though. In all
>likelihood, her new job will pay as much (or more) than her previous
>job. The bad news: she got the fuzzy end of the stick in a divorce and
>has a lot of debt. She has a few credit cards, and they're all new
>(she wanted to change the accounts so her ex couldn't continue to
>leach off them). The limits are low (a total of around $6,000) and the
>balances are within pennies of the limit. She also has about $5,000 in
>student loans she's still paying and about $7,000 in car payments. To
>make matters worse, just before the divorce, her ex (husband at the
>time) cajoled her into cosigning his car loan ($10,000). Yeah, I know,
>she's a credit rating train wreck. On the plus side, she's very
>responsible with payments. There is no derogatory information in her
>history and the only recent inquiries would be for the new cards she
>got to replace the ones her ex-husband insisted on abusing and the
>co-signed car loan. She hasn't requested her credit score (An ego
>thing, I think. She knows what the divorce has done to it).
>
>And... What can we do between now and then to help raise her credit
>score? (Lots of things, I know, but what is the most important?)


What makes you think her score is bad? If she has made all of her payments
on time and has no derogatory information in her history then she likely
has a pretty good credit score already! You could help by transferring
some of her credit card balances to your credit cards, because that's
about the only negative factor she has (credit cards close to limit).
$17000 in car loans and a student loan is nothing.


Dimitri