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The Mistake That Plunged My Credit Score 200 Points

Sibylla Nash
Posted on Jul 30, 2012

Her lack of communication and honesty destroyed our friendship. She wasn’t forthcoming when she realized she was in trouble, and going forward she wasn’t honest about her ability to pay. Today, we barely speak unless it has to do with the house (which I’ve never even seen, as I live in Los Angeles while she and her house are in New Jersey).

I’m on the Road to Recovery

As it stands, she hasn’t made a mortgage payment in more than a year and owes almost $30,000. We owe this amount. Co-signing makes me just as liable. The house has been under contract for a short sale and hopefully we will close soon (although I found out only three weeks before closing that she neglected to pay another $25,000 in outstanding dues, so who knows what will happen now). Mistake number four was not creating any type of contract that outlined our agreement.

I wouldn’t recommend co-signing on a stick of gum for anyone after going through this. It is more trouble than it’s worth. If the friendship has to end because your friend insists that you co-sign, at least you still have your credit.

RELATED: Can an Overdue Library Book Hurt Your Credit Score?

All is not lost for me. In order to bring up my credit score, I’ve been focused on paying down my credit card bills and student loans. For the last two years, I’ve used lump sums of my tax return to pay off my credit cards. In effect, I’m decreasing my debt to income ratio and showing that I am able to keep up with my obligations on time.

My credit score has inched up to 698. I’ve paid off two cards in the past two years. I have one more to go, plus my student loans, and then I’m done! That has been the most exhilarating part of this journey. I’m on the road to becoming debt-free (except for my own mortgage).

RELATED: The Best Ways to Raise Your Credit Score Immediately

It’s also forced me to operate more on a cash-only basis because I have limited credit, which has the side benefit of helping me budget better and be smarter with how I spend my money. I don’t have the credit resources I used to have in case of emergencies.

It’s also prompted me to have honest conversations about credit and our responsibility with my daughter. It’s not that my parents never cautioned me about co-signing for someone, it’s just that I never thought the worst case scenario could happen to me.

(When talking to your children about money, keep from making these mistakes.)

I’ve learned the lesson that you never want to put your financial livelihood in someone else’s hands. And when you co-sign, that’s exactly what you do.

Sibylla Nash is a freelance writer and author of novels “Bumped,” “DreamCity” and more.

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  • Lisa

    I can’t even imagine all the heartache you’re going through. I co-signed a very small student loan for a friend and what a huge mistake that was. I’m now diligently working to take the same actions and we’re no longer friends as a result. What a mess. 

    • Sibylla Nash

      Thank you Lisa!  It is a mess!  I’m glad you are working through it as well. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and blare it from the foothills and the mountaintops to others in hopes that they don’t follow in our footsteps.   

      • Daunik7

        the best part is that you are taking responsibility for your pwn mistakes and not blaming it all on your friend which would be so much easier, but would also put you in a negative space and keep your heart bitter. So keep it up because the more you own up to it the more success you will have in your own personal life as this will continue to drive you to be better. Good luck

        • Sibylla Nash

          Thanks Daunik7! My fingers are crossed that this will be over soon.

      • Jackson

        I have always heard, never lend a friend money or co-sign.  but somehow we always think that we are the exception to that rule, and I think thats what get us especially women in trouble.  I lent my BEST friend $1000, long time ago, could not believe what I had to do to get it back. I haven’t  spoken to her in over 20 years.  So when I was asked to co-sign for a sibling the answer was NO. still luv ya though.  There is a reason it is one of LIFE rules.

  • Jojo

     I agree, if you have to choose between friendship and credit, just
    choose your credit.  It has the biggest impact on your life and family. 
    It may sound cold, but it’s a lesson many of us learn the hard way.

    • Maria

      and if you lose friends over something like this, they were not your real friends to begin with.

  • Jennifer T

    Great article!  I would even go as far as to include family members as well!

    • Jackson

      EXPECIALLY FAMILY

      • Jacksonap

        especially family,  was excited by the artical

        • http://twitter.com/jeneller Jenelle Romero

           True that!

  • Katherene`

    First of all Sibylla, I’m sorry that you are going through this.  And I’m sorry for others who has gone through or going through the same.  This is a hug lesson in life not what to do when it involves money and friends. The cost of not only money, but friendships are torn apart and never again the same.  I applauded you for letting go the bitter and building on the positive.  Your mistake can now be a sounding board for all to learn from.  I can see where your experience will be very beneficial in helping others.  Please continue to share your story.  One never knows how this can turn into a business venture for you.  Blessing to you! 

    • Sibylla Nash

      Thanks Katherene! I definitely feel as though something positive has to come out of this and am open to the possibilities.  

  • Anndrex1

    My same story. I actually bought a has for a friend and rented it out to him. He stopped making payments. The house was burglarized  while i had it on the market for sale (Jacuzzi stolen, water left running, two floors had to be totally gutted and rebuilt with my money). Insurance would not pay because the property was vacant.The Credit scenarios you mentioned all happened to me. It forced me to live off cash. And now I actually can pay down my debt because I don’t have credit cards to rely on. The house is rented out now but that in itself is a head ache. 

  • Susan

    I’m living the same story with the exception that after a couple years of no payment….in the final moment before the short sale she paid all the catch up and became current again.  Now, the pattern is miss payments for a couple months, payup, miss, payup.  She does not qualify for refinancing and won’t sign papers to sell.  This has been going on for several years now and I am debt free except for this dern mortgage that I’m on.  IS THERE ANYWAY TO STOP THIS MADDNESS or is this my new reality for the next 20 years??? At which time I’ll be to old to get a mortgage.  Thank you so much for this article, I’ve felt I’m the only one in the world living this hell.  How do I get off this mortgage?

    • Sibylla Nash

      Susan, I’m so sorry for your situation and definitely feel your pain!  It’s unfortunate that she’s so unwilling to be of more help.  Even though she does not qualify for refinancing, you should check and see if the bank has a program for her to get you off loan. She has to become current in payments and be employed but there is a way to do it. I remember early on when I still had hope, our bank told me about this – I’m just blanking on the name of the program/loan.  

  • Maria

    I have a similar story. 
    A fiance of 3 years insisted that he wanted a new car and the only way to get it for him was my name on the loan. So I did it. He also needed 3 root canals in one year and I co-signed for the credit card that’d enable him to get the procedures done. A year ago we decided to end the relationship, and a couple months after that he just dropped off the $30k vehicle on my driveway with 2 missed payments. The car was about $6k under water, and had some minor damages here and there. I spent overall about $2k to get the loan to current and make the repairs. The dealership was very sympathetic and quickly helped me refinance that and my other vehicle for a new one.
    A month later? You guessed it! I get a call from the credit card company saying that he hasn’t made a payment in 2 months. I also found out that he purchased a new full bred puppy for himself.
    So now I have a $1000 credit card to pay off.
    Lesson learned?
    NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES CO-SIGN FOR ANYONE.

    • sonneithia lovejoy

      WOW….I have a similar story but worse I think. I had a fiance for 2 yrs, the relationship ended,shortly after I returned from Afghanistan. To make matters worse I co-signed for a truck for him while we were together, and had a car in my name as well. To complicate thngs worse when i went to trade in my old car for my new one, my mother informed me that she had lost her job…again, and her car had been repoed, and the car she got for transporation and had paid cash (so no car payments she owned the title)  for after the repo , she sold to another person without a contract being drawn up AND THAT PERSON STILLS OWES HER $$ TO THIS DAY. Like a dummy (trying to do the right thing and it was family, my mother afterall) I gave her my old car and put her on the lease to finish up the payments. made them less so she could afford to.                                          

      Fast foward a couple of months when all this came out after my break up with my fiance, after i had co-signed for his truck (thinking she had made payments, car was paid off and only had my car in my name and truck i co-signed for) I found out what my mother did, so now have three vehicles with my name on them. My car, which i pay for, my old car, which my mother drives (shes been missing payments and its not paid off), and the truck i cosigned for my ex fiance. TALK ABOUT BEING PISSED OFF, IM PAST ANGRY, ESPECIALLY AFTER I PULLED MY CREDIT SCORE!!!!!

      I didnt know, about my mother’s situtation and if so i wouldve never given her my old car and wouldve used it as a trade in at the dealership as i had arranged to do, and def wouldn’t ve have co-signed truck for my ex UNDER THE ASSUMPTION my old car had been taken care of so only one vehicle in my name. Needless to say delaership informed me, my name was infact still on the car so im responsible for it as well as my mother, and you guessed it, my ex has been late on payments and finance company called me to see if I knew or would correct porblem, did I mention hes MY EX!! and yes I pay my car note for my vehicle.

      Im now trying to clean up my credit, hired a firm to do just that, and Im not sure what to do to decrease my debt to ratio income with all these vehicles. if i take the car from my mom, she wont have transportation, my ex won’t give up the truck, and I have to keep my car because its my transportation. So any ideas, I would greatly be happy to get them. TALK ABOUT A WELCOME HOME GIFT FROM MY 1YR LONG DEPLOYMENT TO AFGHANISTAN….SOOOO MAD. BY THE WAY INCASE YOUR WONDERING MY AGE,  I JUST TURNED 23 LAST WEEK.  
      NEVER again will I HELP anyone out with a loan or anything of the sort. I wont even loan $$ to someone now. I dont CARE what the circumstance or relation/friendshipship the person has to me my answer will ALWAY be from now on…..NO! and HELL NO, if they ask twice!

    • sonneithia lovejoy

      WOW….I have a similar story but worse I think. I had a fiance for 2 yrs, the relationship ended,shortly after I returned from Afghanistan. To make matters worse I co-signed for a truck for him while we were together, and had a car in my name as well. To complicate thngs worse when i went to trade in my old car for my new one, my mother informed me that she had lost her job…again, and her car had been repoed, and the car she got for transporation and had paid cash (so no car payments she owned the title) for after the repo , she sold to another person without a contract being drawn up AND THAT PERSON STILLS OWES HER $$ TO THIS DAY. Like a dummy (trying to do the right thing and it was family, my mother afterall) I gave her my old car and put her on the lease to finish up the payments. made them less so she could afford to.
      Fast foward a couple of months when all this came out after my break up with my fiance, after i had co-signed for his truck (thinking she had made payments, car was paid off and only had my car in my name and truck i co-signed for) I found out what my mother did, so now have three vehicles with my name on them. My car, which i pay for, my old car, which my mother drives (shes been missing payments and its not paid off), and the truck i cosigned for my ex fiance. TALK ABOUT BEING PISSED OFF, IM PAST ANGRY, ESPECIALLY AFTER I PULLED MY CREDIT SCORE!!!!!
      I didnt know, about my mother’s situtation and if so i wouldve never given her my old car and wouldve used it as a trade in at the dealership as i had arranged to do, and def wouldn’t ve have co-signed truck for my ex UNDER THE ASSUMPTION my old car had been taken care of so only one vehicle in my name. Needless to say delaership informed me, my name was infact still on the car so im responsible for it as well as my mother, and you guessed it, my ex has been late on payments and finance company called me to see if I knew or would correct porblem, did I mention hes MY EX!! and yes I pay my car note for my vehicle.
      Im now trying to clean up my credit, hired a firm to do just that, and Im not sure what to do to decrease my debt to ratio income with all these vehicles. if i take the car from my mom, she wont have transportation, my ex won’t give up the truck, and I have to keep my car because its my transportation. So any ideas, I would greatly be happy to get them. TALK ABOUT A WELCOME HOME GIFT FROM MY 1YR LONG DEPLOYMENT TO AFGHANISTAN….Extremely ANGRY, especially at myself for being to nice and trusting. BY THE WAY INCASE YOUR WONDERING MY AGE, I JUST TURNED 23 LAST WEEK. NEVER again will I HELP anyone out with a loan or anything of the sort. I wont even loan $$ to someone now. I dont CARE what the circumstance or relation/friendshipship the person has to me my answer will ALWAYS be from now on…..NO!!! and HELL NO, if they ask twice!!

  • Eglos1986

    I had put my ex’s dental in my name because he couldn’t get any credit. Plus there were credit cards in my name that were used for him. I also had cards in my name that were for my mother. After we split, he decided he was not responsible for his part of the debt and my mother just couldn’t pay me her part. I was 22 and had to file bankruptcy because I am disabled and could not afford all the payments. My current fiance had cosigned a car loan for his ex, and she has missed payments. His score is not that great now and neither is mine. So when we  needed a new car (both of ours were on the verge of death), we had no choice but to put both of our names on the car. I do not think I made a bad decision there. I know things can change, but I do not see us splitting up any time soon. We are actually trying to have a baby. We have started to rebuild our credit, but ended up with a bit more credit card debt than we wanted. Emergencies came up and we had no choice. But we fixing it. I have learned my lesson though. I will not get something in my name for someone I know may not make payments. It is tough to learn this the hard way and I hope others read the article and think twice before helping someone, even if it is the right thing to do.

  • Lisa

    Sibyllia, Thank you for sharing your story.  I will sending this post along to my daughter and son.  A very timely lesson for all – especially how you handle it.  I am glad this did not interfere with your plans to move to LA.  Good advice also on letting a friendship end if it has to.  
    I am going to pass along the comment from Jackson about saying NO but still love ya!  I may actually use that line one day.

  • ranavain

    I’m so sorry so many people find themselves in this situation, but I have to say that I think people might be taking away the wrong message from all of this. To me, the motto should not be to never lend money to friends or relatives. It should be to never take on debts you can’t afford. If you can’t afford to pay two mortgages, don’t co-sign that second one. That’s why it’s called co-signing… you’re an equal party to that loan. Nobody has 100% job security. People need to learn to take on debts that they can handle… and I’d say it’s a stretch for most people to really be able to afford one mortgage, let alone two.

    But I lend money to friends and family all the time, because I live by the rules of 1) not taking on debts I can’t afford, and 2) I don’t lend money that I can’t live without. I don’t expect those loans to be paid back. If they are… great! If not, that’s what I expected, and I was still able to help out a friend in a time of need. Separating business and personal seems so cruel sometimes. It’s fraught with challenges, but if people were just in general more careful about debt, it would not ruin friendships the way it has.

    • Sibylla Nash

      Great point! It’s true, it makes it a lot easier to “loan” money if you don’t have an expectation of getting it back. 

      I think the bigger take away or the point I was trying to make is not so much the fact that she missed her payments, it’s the lack of communication after it happened.  We could have figured something out to minimize the damage if I had known she was in trouble.

      • ranavain

        Oh goodness yes! If you get into an arrangement like this with a friend or family member, there should definitely be an implicit agreement that you’re willing to help each other out if things get sticky, and that communication is key!

  • robin

    I saved a co-worker from making that same mistake when a relative asked her to co-sign.   She was under the mistaken notion that she could file a quit claim and not be held liable if her relative failed to pay.   When I told her a quit claim does NOT release her from the loan liability she quickly changed her tune.

  • Marlene

    After reading this story what hit me right away is this friend could’t actually afford the transition to homeownership. It sounds as though she couldn’t afford any emergencies that would occur in her new home. What if she finds mould or pipe bursts? So, I follow Judge Judy’s advice: if you loan money to a friend you better be prepared to give that money away to keep the friendship or lose the friendship and get your money back…

  • mbgitw

    I once took the equivalent of USD 4,000 from my CC to loan a friend who was having a lot of financial trouble (about to be evicted). I felt so sorry for her. She promised to pay me back the money by the end of the month. I honestly don’t know what possessed me to do that. Of course she didn’t pay it back at the end of the month and I had to pay interest on that money every month for nearly a year before she paid me back. The only reason our friendship survived this is because she decided on her own to pay me interest as well which I thought was nice of her. However, I learnt my lesson.

    Never again in my life will I loan out money I can’t afford to lose!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=615763230 Cherry Davis

    If you need a co-signer on the loan than you can’t afford the loan.  She should have bought a smaller property or better still not buy a home at all since she likely couldn’t afford a place on her own.  Also if her own family didn’t co-sign that should have been a red flag that they didn’t trust her to be responsible and didn’t want to take a chance or her entire family has awful credit (another red flag).  I couldn’t imagine asking someone to co-sign a loan for me but I’m very conservative about finances.  It’s a shame that she will likely be paying this debt for decades since her ‘friend’ will likely never pay off the bill and won’t care about her credit.  She’ll likely declare bankruptcy and move on …

  • Jan

    I was lucky – the only thing I ever co-signed on was a car loan for my daughter, on the conditions that she A) have the money automatically taken out of her account every month to pay it and B) that I get a copy of her statement directly from Toyota every month.  She’s almost paid off and I think it actually has helped my credit, as it’s another bill paid like clockwork.  Of course, I also threatened to kill her (ha-ha) if she screwed up…..

  • Hypatia

    Thank you for sharing your story. It helps me to know there are other people who have gone through similar situations and that there is hope. While I was in college I co-signed for someone who I thought was a friend, also not really understanding what co-signing meant. I never even thought about the situation years later until I started to get calls about default loans. Come to find out, this “friend” used my name for 2 other loans semesters later without my knowledge. I’m still dealing with this issue a year later as Sallie Mae refuses to release me from the loans I had no knowledge about. All I can do is continue to pay down my own student loans and only use my credit card for emergencies. I wish there had been a class before graduating high school that discussed finances so I had been better aware. Definitely a topic I will be bringing up to my kids whenever that day comes.

  • deskplant

    - A forced sale was the ony solution and should have been started at 3 months late. As a co-signer you also have co-ownership which means you can take legal action to give you the power to sell without her consent or force her to buy you out, thereby getting you off the mortgage.
    - Note, $25k more is $35k owed. Also any negative equity will still be owed if the sale price is a shortfall value. A civil case could be brought maybe to recoup this personal loss.
    - Credit damage can happen in marriages when one partner has a financial ‘lockout’ policy. Most couples ‘co-sign’. This type of partner will create havoc accross the whole credit spectrum for a woman.
    - Credit can be repaired but it’s best if you have your own income to do it, another problem for women relying on husbands as a breadwinner.
    - Credit check companies can have incomplete or just plain wrong data. Check it, and where you think it may be hard for them to prove even if right, challenge them. If they can’t prove it they should have to remove it. Check local laws.
    - Bad debts and missed payments have a time limit on your account, know what this is and plan around it as well. Make sure it’s cleared from your report.
    - And if a credit repair professional can’t help you over missed co-ownership payments, don’t hire them. Financial messes get much more complex than this case. The routes to success are standard ones but can be slow, messy and stressful. Good luck.

  • Rose_c_design

    Haven’t felt so compelled to reply in a long time …  While having “gone there”  in a professional trusting family, and being single now and always standing on my own two feet (bank loans accepted), whilst getting angry with financial institutions that Insist on a guarantee, as if I might not, and thereby walk away.
    I see so much in your article.  I am writing a book myself, in a different country, but empathise anyhow, in light of your plight as you saw it, and what you are doing now to heal over. 
    There are so many contractual and legally available options, small and large, the worse part is accepting you didnt or couldnt take them, be it energy, resources or ”head sand”  limits that restricted you.
    Trust and Communication are such big issues and catalysts for women in financial problems.  They contribute so much to our own acceptance, and therefore speed of progress, or healing.
    Where “we lean hardest on those we love the most” becomes a priviledge or a burden?? and that “lessons in life are a gift”?  – being a forgiving person I have choked on these several times, the most over how long you let it hold you back.  Your friend needs to hear one day what it really cost you, for you both.
    Good luck, good management and good times ahead.  R.

  • Diane

    I co-signed for my boyfriend’s student loans while in college, not thinking about the repercussions.  I got lucky – we married.  I can’t imagine what would have happened had we split up and he didn’t make payments!  Lesson learned indeed.