My Credit Score: Not as bad as I thought, but check back later...

So you know those goofy commercials with the three guys singing in odd places (dressed like pirates) about their credit troubles?  The moral of their story is you should make sure you know what's on your report and know your score.  By law, credit bureaus (three of them) need to provide you with one free credit report per year.  Notice I said report, not score.  Don't get me wrong, the report is very valuable.  You should be going through this with a fine tooth comb to make sure everything is alright.  However, everyone wants to know their score.  It's a unit of measure to tell us how healthy we are financially.  This score can fluctuate from month to month and is usually behind by three or so months.
The last year has wrecked havoc on me financially.  I have paid many bills late, screened and avoided creditor calls, maxed out credit cards, etc.  Overall, a bad year.  I have been putting off reviewing my score because I'm afraid of the bad news.  Sort of like when you are trying to lose weight and you have a really bad week of eating out and not exercise....you don't want to step on the scale to see the bad news.  But if we don't step on the scale, we won't know how much (or little) work we have in front of us.  Likewise, I finally looked up my score on Monday.
Keep in mind, 18 months ago I had goodcredit.  I had paid off most of my cards (revolving credit_, was making all my payments on time, closed accounts I wasn't using, etc.  My score then was in the mid 700s. 
The good news is that my current score is not as bad as I expected.  I thought it would be in the mid to upper 500s.  However, it is roughly 150 points lower than it was a year ago...which is disappointing because it took time to build up the score I was proud of, and now it will take time to build it back up again.
The potentially worse news is that I had ex-husband issues last week involving a mortgage in my name that hasn't been paid for 3 months.  Ouch!  So we will see how that effects my score down the road.....I'm scared just thinking about it.

So what am I doing about it?  First, I set up time to meet with a Debt Management Councilor.  She was great.  We went through all my income, fixed expenses and periodic expenses and came up with a budget planned out over the next several paychecks.  Also, she negotiated the APR% on 7 of my credit cards down to below 9% (I'm embarrassed to admit that the average APR% I was paying on those 7 cards was 27%).  The condition is that I cut them up in her office and close the accounts.....did that feel wonderful!!  All of the cards were store credit cards and with the interest I was spending, I wasn't saving anything by using them.

So, it's a start....and that's where all goals begin.  At the starting line.

Thanks for reading!
Rebecca