You work really hard for what seems like a long time. If you've dug yourself a hole, there's no magic way out of it. My parents had about a 450 4 years ago. They had multiple credit cards worth of debt, mortgage, 2 cars, 2nd mortgage on the same house, and personal loans. They'd been missing payments because their monthly expenses were so high by this point that if anything abnormal happened for the month, they were screwed. Anyway. They switched to penny pinching and started working a few extra hours. All their extra money went to paying of debt. After about a year of this, they consolidated some of their debt into a new, lower interest rate, loan that was easier to handle. Then, slowly, little things happened. They paid off a car and had an extra few hundred dollars every month. That extra money just became a way to pay off other things faster. They kept penny pinching and working at it.
It's been 4 years. They're not done, but have no car loans, no 2nd mortgage, and significantly reduced credit card debt. Their score is now 750, and they have a plan to have themselves completely debt free (except for the mortgage) in 5 more years. Live within your means and work hard. That's it.
You can look up The Dave Ramsey Show on YouTube for some extra guidance. He's got a good baby steps program for people who are buried in debt with crap credit and apparently it works really well. I just discovered him yesterday while browsing for something related and his brand of help might be right up your alley.
