Day 229: Next Year Affects This Year

Credit Score: 649

My score dropped again. A friend of ours is getting married next year so we bought plane tickets recently and put them on the credit card. We paid it off on time but not before their monthly report to the bureaus apparently. It increased my debt ratio enough to trip some threshold that the system doesn't like. So, it chopped off a few points. Maybe next month the credit union will report it paid and my credit usage will go back down and my score back up? Or perhaps it sticks around for a while. While not a big deal, if you're watching your score closely, it may be worth finding out when your card reports to the bureaus and pay down any big charges before then.

I have a determined goal now to buy a house again, while interest rates are low and prices haven't bounced back too much. So Corey and I went to see a financial planner - he didn't even glare at us after hearing that we strategically defaulted. The planner says we're on track for buying a house soon (and he'd be happy to coordinate the loan for us). We could even afford a much more expensive house than we've been planning but that would require using both our incomes and both our credit reports. Since my credit is bad and getting worse, we want to just use Corey's. His income is enough to get us a house and location that we like, so no need to use both our stats and end up with a higher interest rate. It was sure helpful to build a down payment by being able to stash away 9+ months of mortgage payments. We could afford to buy now, but will wait a little while. We don't yet meet all of Suze Orman's requirements for buying a house - 20% down payment and an 8 month emergency fund - but we could by next summer. With the condo foreclosure in under two months now (knock on wood), we'll start looking for a place to rent soon, and then think about buying once we're well out of this place and have closer to 8 months in an emergency fund.  I'm excited :)


Although, with the small uptick in home prices, my condo appears to be worth a little more. There are some other units for sale in my complex, some better, some not, but they seem to be averaging a little higher than they were at the beginning of this year. While I may or may not still be 100k underwater, I'm still at least 90k underwater, and that will still be a LOT of taxes to pay.

Final note, my third credit report was self-scheduled to be viewed in a couple weeks, but I think I'll leave it a while longer. Since my credit hasn't done much of anything in a couple months, I don't think I'll learn anything from it yet. If I wait to look at it after the foreclosure, that'll be much more informative.