Hi all - sure am glad I found this site. My bad credit started on 7/9/02. It was the day my company went out of business. I was on maternity leave at the time. I had one hell of a time finding daycare for my son and when I finally did find a reputable and affordable place, I had an even harder time finding a job. Being on unemployment, I could not afford rent, daycare and cc bills so I paid what was important and did my best to keep a roof over my head. All my accounts eventually went to collections. The calls were crazy. Telling them I was unemployed was a joke to them. One CA told me to get a job at McDonald's!!!! Anyway, I ended up filing BK 12/30/03. My discharge is set for 4/5/04. My question is, do I wait until discharge to start credit repair, or should I start now? I pulled my credit report & score from experian - score at present is 554. Oh, one more thing. I rec'd a letter from a Ford dealership in my area. The sales person told me that he would be contacting me once my BK was discharged because he wants so desperately to sell me a new car. In the mean time he would periodically send me letters to keep in touch. I know BK is public record, but this just seems a little sick to me. Anyone ever heard of this before?
You will also get plenty of offers in the mail for new credit cards soon after your discharge. Everyone knows that you cannot file another BK for 6 or 7 years and that is why you will find everyone offering you deals. You did what you had to do to get yourself out of a hole. Think long and hard about using any more credit freely so soon after BK (unless you have a new job that is paying you well!) Take it slow and build up your credit and in a couple of years you will have FICO scores around 650!
Thanks for the words of encouragement. I plan on gathering and reading as much information as I can take. And yes I am working again (through a temp agency) I plan on limiting the number of credit cards I will have and I plan on reading each offer thoroughly!! These were mistakes I made before. If it said pre-approved, I made room for it in my wallet. Never read the fine print. I was a credit card junkie!!!!
Hi, Kat! I've been where you're at now, having filed BK7 in 2002 and getting it discharged in 3/2003. As a couple of the other posters in this thread have suggested, figure out what got you to the point where you had to file BK. That is so important so that you don't go there again. As far as credit repair goes, I'd wait until about a month after discharge before attempting any credit repair. Doing so should allow the CA's, etc., to report the items correctly. About a month after discharge, pull all of your credit reports and ensure that items are being reported correctly. Dispute the items that are being reported incorrectly. As soon as our BK was discharged, my wife and I got all sorts of offers from car dealers. As the other posters in this thread have said, wait things out a bit, then you'll be able to get financing at better rates. Hope this info helps. John
That helped alot. It's nice to hear from good people- including those that have been where I am currently at. I will take your advice and wait 1 month, after discharge, before starting repair. I will hold off on any new credit - but if something looks good I will run it by the gang before applying Thanks again
