Trying to rebuild my credit

Question

Back in 2009 I went through a terrible divorce. I became a single father and my credit took a huge hit. My exwife walked away from the kids and I. Money was tight raising 2 kids so i let my credit cards go. i had gotten those in 2011-2012. Since then Ive has no other forms of credit except the vehicles i financed.Those credit cards and a couple doctor bills ended up in collection. I have since paid them off reciently. I didnt kow about the PFD thing so i just paid them. It wasnt much 1700ish total.Now im trying to rebuild my credit, within the last month I have gotten 3 CC. I have had no CCsince 2011/12 1 for 300, 1 for 500, and a secured one for 1000 for my credit union. I have also went on as an authorized user on my wife now american epress 10,000 limit and her goodyear CC 2600 ( i dont know if this will help )I have tried to dispute some of the negitive things on my credit report and it pretty much all came back as comfirmed it belonged to me.This was hard on me as before i was able to pretty much get whatever I wanted and now with my credit score its almost impossible unless i put down a huge down payment I,E i put down 20,000 on my truck just to get finaced and still ended up with a 24,99 intrest rate.Ive been really tring to get these removed from my credit. they say they are do to fall off in 2019 but we are looking to hopefully by a home soon as with the combned family this one is a bit small. my fico8 scored ived gotten up to EQ 517 TU 489 EX 589 My advantage scores are EQ 519 TU 556 EX 556. These are coming from a low 400 score a little over a month ago.Ive read alot on the diffrences, am i allowed to ask a finacial instituation what they use as it seems my advantage score would really help me out. It was just a real difficult time in my life, and now im just trying to find a way to fix it. Divorce put a BK on my credit too that falls off in 2017.I know time will fix it but is there anything else i can do? I read about GW letters but I imagine that the CC companies and the CA could really care less about difficult times.I can say its been very humbling coming from someone that had credit that could get anything they wanted to having to pay huge amounts just praying to get finaced.Sorry for the long post.

Answer 1

also i will add i have 2 tax leins that are paid on my credit from 2010, im filling out the form to have those removed.I also have a judgement that i paid in full on my credit from 2012 from wells fargo. Im not exactly sure how to remove those, since 2012 i have had no new credit. everything i have bought has been cash. so my payment history sucks its why i really want to remove those 2 years of bad things.