Get Better Credit
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) provides those consumers of Tampa, Clearwater, St. Petersburg as well as the rest of us across the country with legal protections. Specifically, the FCRA protects you when you apply for and are denied credit. Credit reporting agencies receive their information directly from your creditors. Their reports consist of historical as well as ongoing information. A bankruptcy stays on your credit record for up to 10 years, but you can minimize its effect thereby increasing your credit score in a relatively short period of time if you follow some simple steps. Following bankruptcy or another dramatic hit to your credit report such as foreclosure your objective should be to responsibly create new credit history, while allowing time to elapse for these events to disappear into your past.
After you’ve been discharged from bankruptcy, you need to notify the credit bureaus in writing. You need to notify them that they need to update their records and -O- out your balances after bankruptcy. You should include a copy of your “Discharge”and “Schedule of Creditors”. You should mail this to each of the 3 reporting agencies by certified mail. Remember that these agencies are not your creditors, but they are reporting information from your creditors. Because you have sucessfully been discharged in bankruptcy, your balances have been erased from your creditors, thus relieving them from updating the reporting agencies of your new balances. All debts discharged in bankruptcy are to be reported as -O-.
Ongoing payments and other debts you have recently incurred should be paid early if you can. At the latest, pay on time and never make a late payment. Re-establishing credit after bankruptcy is necessary for you to obtain financing and favorable interest rates in the future.
If you reaffirmed certain debts in your Chapter 7 bankruptcy, make sure to make all payments Early or ON TIME. Make sure to allow enough time for your creditors to post payments.
If you filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, make sure to make all payments to your trustee on time.
Keep good records of all payments made, in case you ever need to prove that you did make payments.
Keep a copy of your bankruptcy papers, which are also available on the web at www.flmb.uscourts.gov
Applying for and receiving new credit will be a difficult matter. Try to join a credit union after your bankruptcy is discharged. Credit Unions often offer more favorable rates and in time, while you maintain a good account, it may be easier to borrow money from a credit union because you of your good standing as a member.
Don’t bounce checks. It will wind up on your credit report.
Pay your rent on time, with a check that you can obtain a cancelled copy of should it be necessary to do so. Pay before a late fee is imposed, even if your landlord says it’s OK.
If you need to buy a car, try to borrow money from a credit union or bank, which reports to the credit bureau, even if you intended to pay cash. Ask if the creditor reports to the credit bureau, and which one.
Many credit card companies will issue a “secured” Visa, which means that if you deposit money with them, they lend you your own money. But they report to the credit bureau, and that will help you in the long run. Try to get a secured Visa and pay it absolutely on time.
When credit is denied based on information in a credit report, the credit grantor must tell you the name and address of the credit bureau used to secure the information. Please be aware that contacting any credit bureau by phone or email DOES NOT preserve your rights under the law.
You can Contact a Tampa Bankruptcy Attorney for the addresses of these credit bureaus and to help you clean up any bad credit left on your reports after a bankruptcy.
If you believe that information on your credit report is inaccurate, the credit bureau must investigate the item within a “reasonable time”, generally 30 days, and remove the item if it is inaccurate or cannot be verified as accurate.
The credit bureaus “recommend” that you not apply for credit while a dispute is pending. You have the right to insert up to a 100 word explanatory statement to your report. A credit score takes about 90 days to recalculate and take advantage of updated information. There is no way we can cause this to happen more quickly.
