When Jill Caponera was 25, she moved from New York to Los Angeles. That’s when the money trouble began.
“The cost of moving and everything that goes along with a move are kind of how my financial pitfalls started,” Caponera says. “I was looking for work for quite a few months, and once I found work, I wasn’t being completely responsible with my credit card.”
Before she knew it, she had $5,000 in credit-card debt, and her credit score had plummeted to 600. “It seemed like out of nowhere it snowballed out of control,” she says. “It made me really stressed out and worried about how long it was going to take me to pay off this debt.”
But now, five years later, Caponera, now a senior PR manager with Promocodes.com, has $20,000 with a credit score of 805. She’s planning to start mortgage shopping soon, and has been told she’s “highly qualified.”