I haven't posted on here in a really long time. I didn't want to start a thread about buying our house until the final papers were signed. I do want to tell others though that it is possible.
As some of you know we had a bankruptcy that was discharged in August of 2008. We did not lose a house or have a foreclosure though. We were renters at the time.
After discharge we worked together on a financial plan. Sort of a where do we want to be 20 years from now. Things like, fully fund retirement, buy a house...the big stuff.
I set about reading everything I could on this board about how to request your credit reports and clean them up. Which I seemed to have to redo about every 3 months for the last two years (including one time last month). Then we applied for a credit card and charged only gas...which we paid off in full every month. We also did the same with a consumer card which was paid off again every month. This occurred over the last year and a half. In December we approached our Credit Union (who we did not file on) about getting a loan for a used car (I have some debt paranoia about cars so I was leery about spending too much). After what seemed like forever in underwriting they approved it. So we now had our installment loan. 3 lines of credit all paid on time every month.
In late July we went to a Realtor we knew and said, "here is the situation, we don't want to waste your time if purchasing a home is not possible". She was wonderful and told us to go talk to this mortgage company. We did and we were open and completely honest and told the bank everything. The bank was terrific. They sent our package all they way through underwriting so there would be no last minute ..."sorry you don't qualify" moments. We had anticipated looking for a house for a long time but a foreclosure fell on the market that was a great deal and well under our budget. (Again...back to my debt paranoia). We just closed on the house yesterday and we feel like we have learned a great deal about bankruptcy, debt as well as money management.
I wanted to share with you our experience so that if anyone was wondering if it could be done or not they have a firm answer (although everyone's situation is different).
I also believe "debt paranoia" is not a bad thing.
As some of you know we had a bankruptcy that was discharged in August of 2008. We did not lose a house or have a foreclosure though. We were renters at the time.
After discharge we worked together on a financial plan. Sort of a where do we want to be 20 years from now. Things like, fully fund retirement, buy a house...the big stuff.
I set about reading everything I could on this board about how to request your credit reports and clean them up. Which I seemed to have to redo about every 3 months for the last two years (including one time last month). Then we applied for a credit card and charged only gas...which we paid off in full every month. We also did the same with a consumer card which was paid off again every month. This occurred over the last year and a half. In December we approached our Credit Union (who we did not file on) about getting a loan for a used car (I have some debt paranoia about cars so I was leery about spending too much). After what seemed like forever in underwriting they approved it. So we now had our installment loan. 3 lines of credit all paid on time every month.
In late July we went to a Realtor we knew and said, "here is the situation, we don't want to waste your time if purchasing a home is not possible". She was wonderful and told us to go talk to this mortgage company. We did and we were open and completely honest and told the bank everything. The bank was terrific. They sent our package all they way through underwriting so there would be no last minute ..."sorry you don't qualify" moments. We had anticipated looking for a house for a long time but a foreclosure fell on the market that was a great deal and well under our budget. (Again...back to my debt paranoia). We just closed on the house yesterday and we feel like we have learned a great deal about bankruptcy, debt as well as money management.
I wanted to share with you our experience so that if anyone was wondering if it could be done or not they have a firm answer (although everyone's situation is different).
I also believe "debt paranoia" is not a bad thing.
Converted to asset case 5/26/2008 [X]
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