Oh my sweet. Hope is not lost while the fellowship remains true! Your credit is NOT irreparable. Your shall be a glorious redemption. It will be long and hard and painful, but it WILL happen and I’ll tell you how.
First, educate yourself on credit and student loans:
Dafuq Is Credit and How Do You Bend It to Your Will?
What We Talk About When We Talk About Student Loans
Let’s End This Damaging Misconception About Credit Cards
Next, take the steps to make an immediate dent in the debt. You will need to ultimately make lifestyle changes to completely kill the debt, at least for a while. But here’s the step-by-step:
1. Consolidate your student loans if possible. Programs like SoFi make this easy, but remember that they are there to make a profit, so research the shit out of them or a competitor before you consolidate. The goal is to lower your interest rate, or, if you’re having trouble making your monthly payments, lower the amount of your monthly payment. https://studentloanhero.com/featured/5-banks-to-refinance-your-student-loans/
2. Apply for income based repayment (IBR) of your student loans. Again, this is an option if it’s hard for you to make your payments because you’re not making ends meet. Your credit score depends a lot on paying your bills on time and in full, so IBR might help with that. https://studentloanhero.com/featured/income-based-repayment-plan/
3. Call the hospital and ask them to audit your bill. It’s actually pretty fucking common for them to find errors in billing that will end up lowering the overall amount in your favor. http://www.medicalclaimshelp.org/medical_bill_auditing0.aspx
4. Find out if the hospital where you received medical care has financial aid. This is literally a thing, but it’s obviously not widely publicized. https://www.onesmartdollar.com/how-to-get-financial-aid-for-hospital-bills/
5. Set up automatic payments for your bills. Again, your credit score depends a lot on how consistent you are in paying your bills. Setting up automatic payments can help with this. Schedule these payments either for the day they’re due or the day you receive your paycheck every billing cycle, whichever works better for you.
6. Pay more than the minimum by rounding up to the nearest $10… or more! Paying more than the minimum every billing cycle will help you get ahead on your debt. And the faster you pay down your debt, the faster your credit score will improve.
7. Use the snowball or avalanche method to eliminate debts. We explain these methods here.
8. Once you’ve paid off your debt, make yourself an emergency fund. This will help you avoid falling into debt again later. We explain emergency funds here.
Lastly, I just want to remind you that your medical bills are NOT your fault. People get sick and injured. It’s normal. But if you’re living in the U.S. (and something tells me you are, given the size of your medical bills womp womp), then you’re living under a broken system in which we’re over-charged by hospitals for medical care because insurance providers have driven up the prices by ludicrous amounts. You had nothing to do with creating that system, but you still need to survive it. And you shall.
If you need some motivation where that’s concerned, we got you:
Financial Lessons Learned from a Night in the ER
I Think I Need to Go the Emergency Room?
YOU CAN FUCKING DO THIS. AND YOU WILL. We believe in you.
Dear Bitches, my credit score is 386 and I have $27,000 in debt that I haven’t been able to put a dent in. Part of it is student loans, and part of it was hospital bills from an accident I had last summer. I’ve finally gotten a decent job and can live somewhat comfortably. Is my credit irreparable if it’s this low and my debt is more than I make in a year?
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