The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, act as legal, financial or credit advice; instead, it is for general informational purposes only. Information on this website may not be current. This website may contain links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser; we do not recommend or endorse the contents of any third-party sites. Readers of this website should contact their attorney, accountant or credit counselor to obtain advice with respect to their particular situation. No reader, user, or browser of this site should act or not act on the basis of information on this site. Always seek personal legal, financial or credit advice for your relevant jurisdiction. Only your individual attorney or advisor can provide assurances that the information contained herein – and your interpretation of it – is applicable or appropriate to your particular situation. Use of, and access to, this website or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client or fiduciary relationship between the reader, user, or browser and website owner, authors, contributors, contributing firms, or their respective employers.
Credit.com receives compensation for the financial products and services advertised on this site if our users apply for and sign up for any of them. Compensation is not a factor in the substantive evaluation of any product.
Getting married doesn’t affect your credit score per se. The major credit reporting agencies, for instance, don’t combine your credit history with your significant other’s once you say “I do.”
But, if you have a spouse or soon-to-be-spouse whose credit is less than stellar — or downright “horrible” like John Rampton’s wife Kristy’s was before they married— prepare yourself for the possibility of losing a few notches in your credit-score belt if you want to help dig him or her out of debt.
First, let’s learn more about John and Kristy (who both agreed to share their story): when they got married a couple of years ago, John, 31, knew going in that she had some credit issues.
“I knew she’d had some financial problems — she’d lost her job this and had hard times that — but you never really know until you know,” he said. “I just figured, hey, we’ll get married, we’ll have a few bumps … I know she’ll be a little in debt, but we’ll just pay it off and we’ll go.”
“I knew she had an outstanding student loan of about $12,000. Now, if it had been like $100,000 in credit card debt from a shopping habit, that would’ve been a completely different story, but I wasn’t too worried about it,” he said.
It wasn’t until after they married that they really started talking in earnest about her credit situation, and the reality was she’d had some major financial setbacks. Kristy, now 33, had lost her job and hadn’t been able to make her car payments. The vehicle had been repossessed. She’d missed some student loan payments and some credit card payments, too. Her credit score, somewhere in the 400s, according to John, meant she couldn’t qualify to get the utilities in her own name.
So, John came up with a plan.
“I took over all finances and gave my wife a monthly allowance to teach her money management,” he said.
Then they started pulling Kristy’s credit reports. That was helpful because they found a few unpaid medical bills that Kristy hadn’t even been aware of, including a $24 bill that had gone to collections.
“We paid those off. We paid off her credit cards and her student loans,” John said. “We went to buy a car and I was thinking, we’ve done all these things, our credit score is going to be waaaay better.”
But it wasn’t really, and Kristy didn’t qualify for the auto loan, so John co-signed. His credit score took a ding.
“It wasn’t a severe blow. It took me down a little bit, but it was helping her credit somewhat,” John said. But not enough. So they contacted a credit repair company.
“They started disputing all of these things on her credit report,” he said. After a few months, things started getting removed. (You can go here to learn more about credit repair and credit repair companies.) Her credit score improved, and after about six months, they checked to see if she qualified for a credit card. She didn’t, even though she didn’t have any debt. So they got a secured credit card with a $5,000 limit.
Kelly used it regularly and paid it off multiple times a month. Some months she carried a balance just to see if it helped her credit score. (It doesn’t — best practice is to pay credit card balances off in full.)
“We played around with everything,” John said. “I don’t think there’s one magic bullet when it comes to fixing your credit. You kind of have to do everything.”
Today, Kristy’s score is at 760. And John’s score is also just fine. They don’t have any debt and they’ve even invested in a rental property.
“Now she’s 10-times better than I am [at money management], has all the bills under her name and is an expert at money,” he said. “Some people aren’t brought up with the same knowledge of money. You have to teach them. This was a bit of contention in the beginning of my marriage, but over the course of our first six months, it turned into one of the best things we could have ever done.”
If you find yourself in a similar situation to John and Kristy, here are some tips for you to consider when fixing credit and debt problems.
If you’re looking for more tips on how to improve your credit score, you can use your free credit report summary, updated every 14 days on Credit.com, to track your progress. There may be no shortcuts to better credit, but having a plan will get you there faster than no plan at all.
Image: AndreyPopov
March 7, 2023
Credit Score
January 4, 2021
Credit Score
September 29, 2020
Credit Score