Financial Challenges Support Group
This community is for people who are struggling to meet financial obligations of any kind. Financial challenges include everything from the day-to-day challenges of making ends meet to managing credit card debt to bankruptcy. Get support from others who are going through similar obstacles on the road back to financial stability.
Brief history... in 2010 I was $65,000 in the hole and my credit rating was 360. By the end of 2015, I was out of debt, had five CC's and a credit score of 790.
Then, I picked up and moved from Nebraska to England. One thing I didn't know was that European credit scores and American scores are not in snyc and neither system recognizes the other.
So, I basically am a very high risk canidate for credit. The first obstacle to pass to have a living address for three years. I just got that in January. And the other issue is work. Which hasn't been a problem. I lived in England for a month and started working.
Finally, having my ducks in a row I started appyling for a couple of credit cards. Knowing I had no credit history in Europe, I applied for high risk cards. This is how I rebuilt my credit in America. My first card was with Orchard Bank, which charged me $49 a year to have and 45% interest. Yes, very out of line but my options were - none.
So, I got my approval recently for a Vanquis Card (Visa.) No yearly charge, but are you ready for this? 74% interest! LOL.
Which is OK because I won't be carrying any type of a balance on the card. This is just a way to start building a credit history in England.
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I invited Bill to have dinner with me last Sunday. He wasn't willing to drive 7 hours to mid Michigan and teased me with his beautiful ribs!!! So, of course I ate alone and had cedar salmon
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check out that smoke ring. It tasted really good. I smothered it with Maulls BBQ sauce which is Local to St. Louis and one of the best I ever had.....
Cedarbrooke he married into an English royalty.....LOL I know kidding....he married a lady from England and picked up and Emigrated out of the USA to England......
Anyway Cedar, I apologize for not responding sooner... just got done with a busy work week. I'm 61 and work 12 hour shifts, which really wears me out, on top of past medical issues I do get very lethargic.
To answer your question. In 2009-2010, I was a moderator on a forum, similar to DS. It was a recovery site, based on the 12 Steps. Being the mod, I got to know many of the folks on the site through PM's and questions asked.
One of them was a lovely lady from England. For close to a year, we would chat and share our views about recovery and the 12 Steps. Eventually, our PM's became e-mails, then phone calls, and finally skypes.
We were both single and in early 2010, she said that if I ever wanted to visit England she would be my tour guide. I took it as a nice gesture but never really thought it would happen. By the middle of 2010, my debt was disappearing and I was starting to save a little money, so I asked her if she was serious.
She said yes and we made plans for me to visit over the Christmas season. This way, I could use the last of my vacation pay from 2010 and some of my new vacation pay from 2011 to enjoy the visit, without losing any income.
I stayed for three weeks and had a blast! Soon after I returned to the States, we were already making plans for my return for Christmas 2011. This time the visit lasted five weeks.
Then we took the next step and she visited me in Nebraska in the summer for three weeks. And this is what we did for the next four years. I'd visit England in the winter, she'd visit Nebraska in the summer.
And while we weren't physically together, we had skype calls EVERY single day. We never missed a day where we didn't chat.
After four years of doing this, we decided to take the ultimate step and get married. Where to live was pretty easy. I liked England a lot more than she liked America.
In hindsight, it did work out for the best. Within a year of living here I was diagnosed with throat cancer. Say what you want about socialism, but I totally approve of socialized healthcare.
I spent three weeks in the hospital, had chemo and radiation and now I'm seeing an ENT specialist every three months and I have never seen a bill for any of it. It was a shock to see my first doctor here and not fill out a book's worth of papers and how I was going to pay. And now, having had cancer I get five years of free prescriptions.
And as of the end of January I celebrated two years cancer free...