I have had my old truck for about 8 years. It has 287K miles on it lol. I drive an hour to work and sometimes it really makes me nervous on the turnpike. It makes so many unidentifiable noises. But with my credit in the state that it has been, I never thought a car loan was in my future. Over the past couple of years I have been working on it. I know its not great yet, not even in the "fair" range. I finally just got over the 600 hump, which again, is not the greatest, but figure that is an added 150 points than what I started out with.
I got an Amazon secured card a little over a year ago and I just buy and pay off. I finally got an unsecured low-limit card that I do the same. I waited for a bunch of old inquiries to drop off, then applied and received two more unsecured cards.
One glaring thing that keeps sticking out on Credit Karma is that I do not have a variety of credit and that was holding my progress back. Last Sunday, I worked overnight. I had a meeting at 9am that I had to wait around for, and that lasted an hour and a half zzzzzzzzzz....... which put me in the 16 hour range at work. I went to leave Monday morning and my stupid car wouldn't start. I went in to get my co-worker who is pretty handy with cars and he said it was my starter. He cranked it a few times and finally it turned over. "Do not shut your car off for any reason until you get home". LOL....geeze, hope I don't stall out along the way LOL.
Oh, I also got a "line of credit", which is through credit karma (affiliate) that is basically a secured loan. You pay into it a set amount. It looks like a loan, but it is secured. It made no sense to me at first, but I did research on it and it is a legit way of raising your credit score. My first "loan payment" hit my credit report and it increased by 15 points. The way it works is, they "give you" a small loan. In my case $500 and you pay it off. You can't touch it in the meantime. When you are done, that $500 goes back into my savings account (that my automatic payments come out of), and it starts all over again, using the $500 that is now in your savings account. I thought it was a little shady at first, but it is working. Of course now that it goes into your savings account, you can use it as you please because it is your money, or just leave it there to continue cycling it through this secured loan.
Don't worry, I only use the cards for like a tank of gas then pay it off right away. I am determined to get my credit right for the first time in my life.
So now that my truck had been sitting in in my driveway on jacks all last week, I decided it was time.
So I got me this....
YAY.ME!!!
The payment is high, the interest rate is high. I figured I would give it a few months and see about refinancing it. But I actually got an insurance rate for comprehensive for lower than my current liability rate on my other truck. My friend offered to be a co-signer, but I declined. I don't want to be responsible for anybody else's credit.
It has stuff I don't even know how to use!! You know, like power windows and locks LOL. It is a 2018. My old truck is 2004. It only has 40k miles on it. Gonna have to give up a few luxuries, like eating for now LOL.