Buying A Car With Bad Credit – How Stella Got Her Credit Back

You know the movie and in many ways, you might have been able to relate to it:  buying a car with bad credit is difficult and even embarrassing.  In the movie, she takes a vacation and gets to rediscover herself.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just take a vacation to get your credit score back?

Yeah, I know – I’ve been there.  Bad credit leaves you feeling like you have bad breath.  It’s like something is wrong with you and lenders don’t want to get anywhere near you.

Has this ever happened to you?

Purchasing a car is intimidating.

Still, you muscle up the courage and go to your bank or the auto dealership.  The loan officer or car salesman is nice, really nice – as he goes through the options of loans that might work for you.  You pick a loan and the banker goes off to pull your credit report.

You sit and wait patiently until finally, they head back to you.  The thing is – he looks like he’s being forced to eat rotten tomatoes! Alarmed, you begin to panic.  What could possibly be wrong?

Don’t worry, you don’t have a sudden case of halitosis.  It’s your credit score.

There are solutions:

Not to worry, you can still find places to buy a car with bad credit.  Better yet, you can just improve your credit and it’s not that hard: just a few simple steps will really help you on your way.  So, before you get started getting your credit back, you need to ask yourself these questions:

1. Take a look at your credit report.  What’s on it?  What’s hurting it?  There are a number of things that can affect your credit score, so you need to find out what it is in order to fix it.  For example, do you have too many late pays?  Do you not have enough credit?  There is a solution for all of these problems. These may be the issues why getting a car with your bad credit is impacting you.

1. Okay, so let’s say you have too many late payments on your credit report.  First things first:  how are your payments now?  Are you making them on time?  On time payments are essential, so start making all of your payments in a timely manner.
   1. When you are making your payments on time for a while, you may be able to send a goodwill letter to get your creditors to remove old late payments from your credit report.
   2. If you’ve had late payments until now, there is no better time to start paying your stuff on time.  Consider setting up a budget to help you get going with making all payments in a timely manner.

1. What about if you don’t have enough credit?  It’s time to get some more.  You can do this in a couple of ways, but it’s a good idea to start out by applying for a good credit card if you don’t have one and make monthly payments.
   1. Not looking to build debt?  Consider “piggybacking” with a friend or family member who has really good credit.  Your parents might be able to help you here if they have what it takes.  They make sure that their creditor would be willing to add you to their account as an “authorized user” and make sure to include all your essential information, such as social security number and birth date.  You let them keep the extra card so you don’t run up any debt and ride off their good credit.
   2. You might also find that you make some pretty good progress by getting a small loan with a bank or lender who is more flexible with their lending standards but still reports to the credit bureaus.

1. Okay, so if you have too many inquiries, this will apply to you.  One of the best ways to get rid of these is to check on who was making the inquiry and dispute them if you didn’t request them.  Otherwise, give it a rest for a while.  This means not trying to get credit of any kind for about six months to a year.

1. Now, maybe you’re looking at your credit report and scratching your head.  Not late, not many inquiries.  Okay, take a look at your balances.  You usually have a pretty good idea as to what kind of balances you’re carrying on your credit cards, but if you’re maxed out, your credit score will show it.  This one seems hard, and it might be for a while, but you need to pay down those balances.  So, stop buying things and work to pay more than the minimum monthly payment until you get your balances to about 30% or less of the total available credit.

Buying a car with damaged credit is frustrating and improving your scores can be the fast solution! You can even get a car with no money down when you have improved credit!

You don’t have to make a million dollars a year to do it either!

I know how embarrassing it can be to have bad credit.  I know how frustrating it can be to not get what you need and want because you have bad credit.  I know what it feels like to buy a car with damaged credit.

I also know that you CAN get your credit back and start living the life and being the person you really want to be.

I hope this helps!