Resolved Question: How do you repair your credit after a foreclosue...which was due to divorce?

My boyfriend & I are trying to plan for the future, specifically home buying & getting married. We are trying to save & rebuild our credit. I have 7 c.c., he has 3 c.c., we have 2 joint c.c.; I have 62.5k in auto loans (we have nothing but our nice cars for sanity--all xtra $ goes to credit..nothing else!). We also have student loans, his were delinquent for 3 years! I have 8k in student loans that Im current & overpay on; he has 80k in student loans that we just made current (cost thousands), stopped the wage garnishments, and plan to refinance them. After bills each month we have about $600 left ea. mo. to save! I just recently obtained a loan for $8500 to pay our cards & pay the back pmts on his loans so the garnishments would stop. In combo w/ his loan issues, I had every credit card available & didnt pay on them when I was 18(pd off now). My score is 540 his is 436...how are we going to get a home & when, are we on the right path? Should I close those pd off cards/leave em open? HEADLINER REVISED
I was told out of the 12 cards to keep 3 open per ssn or for each of us to use as revolving credit and those should be the cards open the longest regardless of the rate or fees (most of our cards, as you could imagine, have high rates and annual fees) and close the rest so two of the cards are already closed. After I closed them, that is when I was notified that closing your cards at once was a bad idea. So what should I do with my remaining 3 cards--close or leave open?

Oh and if it helps he has two paid off autos on his credit--one already on and one posting; and I have 2 posting not posted yet.

Random:
Do car insurance companies run your credit?

Resolved Question: Am I a victim of predatory lending?

About 5 months ago my husband and I were approached (via phone) by a loan broker. He offered us a great refinancing deal. He said that our credit had improved since we had taken out out original home loan and we qualified for a lower interst rate. He told us that we could take out cash and still have a lower payment. My husband asked him to go over the terms over and over and it all sounded great. However, when we got our payment slip from Countrywide it showed that we had 4 payment options: 1:min. payment (which was less than interst only) this was lower than our original payment 2.Intrest only (which was $200 more that our original payment) 3.intrest plus principal (this was $600 higher than the original payment) 4. a 15 year payoff for over $1000 more than our original payment.
We had never heard of this and would obviously have not signed on for this if we understood. Countrywide they said they had similar complaints. We had to refinance this loan as well & lost $36K in equity. I don' know how we lost so much equity. We only took out $20K. At the start of the process we owed $332 on our home and now we owe $385 (fees I suspect.) Only the broker sugar coated the entire thing.

Resolved Question: How do you repair your credit after a foreclosue...which was due to divorce?

My X had possession of the home with the condition it be refinanced in a certain number of years. He did not pay the property taxes and the home was sold.

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