EveryDay Info

Most people who go through a bankruptcy are told by their lawyer that their credit report will take care of itself and there’s nothing they need to do about it. Rarely does this turn out to be true. Most of the time, a bankruptcy will leave lingering items on your credit report for years and years. Sometimes creditors will continue to report on items that were rolled into a bankruptcy and they are not allowed to do that. Other times, those creditors will simply not update the accounts to show a zero balance. This too is illegal. 

When it comes to credit repair, fixing credit after a bankruptcy is just about the easiest scenario you could be in. Most likely, you will probably want to write credit dispute letters for all accounts you included in your bankruptcy. Why? There are two reasons: 1) usually creditors do not respond to these letters since you don’t owe them anything–this causes the account to be deleted; and 2) because it is usually the case that the creditors are reporting these accounts incorrectly. The second reason is really what affords you the right to dispute the account. The first reason is where the benefit to you lies.

If a large number of accounts were included in your bankruptcy, then you will have quite a few credit repair letters to write. This can be a pain, but it is well worth your time. You could hire one of the thousands of credit repair companies, but if you look at what these companies really do compared to how much you will have to pay, you will probably feel like you’re getting ripped off. Like anything, you have to look at your whole situation. Can you afford 3 hours of time to save yourself $600 – $1000? If so, you should look into doing self credit repair. Especially in the case of a bankruptcy where it is a simple matter of mailing out one batch of credit dispute letters, self credit repair is really the wisest option–and it can be done for only the cost of the postage you’ll buy to mail the letters.