Have any you ever recovered from not so great credit, if so what did you do?

pay your bills on time and the credit card offers will come. never have more the one card at a time and ALWAYS pay when due.

on time payments, get an auto loan or a secured credit card (read the aplication for the card VERY carefully) and make the payments ON TIME! Even if you payoff all of the derogatory on your credit bureaus they will just show paid, they will not come off. They will not fall off for 7 years from the DLA- date of last activity (for consumer accounts) or 10 years (for any public records). Be real careful about anybody that promises you that for a fee they can "clean up" your credit, is is usually a scam or somebody who will dispute everything. First you can do it yourself, but it really doesn't help. The items will come off for a while and go back on when the creditors reload their tapes with a new DLA which just stretches out the time involved. Lastly try to settle with your creditors, many will take 30 to 75% on the dollar.

Remember credit is trust, and it takes a while to establish trust

i lived out of the US for about 8-9 years not because credit problems, but when I came back I had no credit good or bad I apply for a card was denied for no credit history I got a high interest rate card paid on or before due date never late now have good credit.

I increased my fico score by 40 points in 9 months. I wrote a few letters to creditors using the 1-2 punch strategy and the blanket dispute strategy at creditboards.com. The bad stuff melted off like butter.

Here's the link:

http://www.creditboards.com/

I did. I paid all my bills on time and when credit card offers came, I took 2 cards and paid them on time. Also got a car payment and paid it on time. Paid my student loans off. Made the mistake in college and fixed it in my mid 20's.

Yep. Paid off my back debts, and from then on made sure I paid all of my bills on time.

Pretty simple, eh? (Never quite sure why some people JUST DON'T GET IT!)