Credit repair after bankruptcy
How does your credit look after bankruptcy?
After getting your bankruptcy discharge you need to prepare to tackle the task of making sure that credit entries in your credit report are not still showing delinquent accounts. Anything that should have been included in bankruptcy needs to be labeled as such. About 3 months after your bankruptcy discharge you need to take a close look at your credit report and fix any erroneous entries. These can cause trouble for you down the road qualifying for credit, loans, jobs etc.
You’ll be able to get your credit report from all three credit bureaus by visiting Annual Credit Report, everyone is entitled to a free credit report per year. When you get your report you are very likely to find accounts that have not been cleared after filing bankruptcy. It’s common for creditors not to bother to make these updates especially since they’re not getting paid, they’re certainly not interested in doing any favors. However, you must correct these errors yourself.
Repairing your credit report after filing bankruptcy
Ideally you’d want to wait from 3 to 6 months to get your credit reports and start spotting anything that should have been included in bankruptcy. If you find that accounts that should now be closed are still open and delinquent, then what you need to do is make a copy of your bankruptcy schedules and discharge documents and start a dispute with the credit reporting agencies (Transunion, Equifax and Experian). Your discharge papers are the key to get this resolved. This can also take sometime since the verification process is slow.
Hiring credit repair services will work better for anybody, it’s definitely a good option, just be ready to provide your bankruptcy documentation. Credit repair agencies are more effective at doing this, however you must take care to hire only a legitimate credit agency for this industry is filled with scams.
Bounce right back after bankruptcy
Repairing your credit is only one aspect of getting your financial life back on track. You have to now work a little harder to convince creditors that you’re still worthy of getting credit. Even after you get your credit entries corrected, you should know that your bankruptcy file will remain on your credit report for up to 10 years, however that big dark cloud can being to dissolve with positive credit entries that you should be striving to achieve.
There are several ways to regain control of your credit after filing bankruptcy, depending on what you want to accomplish, be it a mortgage, auto loan or a credit card. Your credit report must accurately report your financial history for you to begin rebuilding. Once you do that there many programs that offer bankruptcy credit cards, personal loans and mortgage loans after bankruptcy. Read the post on Getting a mortgage after bankruptcy for more info.
