Abraham Lincoln

Life After Bankruptcy

In the past people would do just about anything to prevent filing for bankruptcy. It was simply so embarassining and people felt ashamed. However now more and more people are seeing bankruptcy as being a ticket out of financial troubles. Of course, there's a lot more to bankruptcy than simply filing for it and then walking away from all of your responsibilites. One of the results of bankruptcy is a very impaired credit rating. If you have found yourself in this situation you will probably want to find ways of repairing your credit score.

As soon as anyone becomes bankrupt, your credit records will updated to reflect this and will show up for a total of seven years. So if you are looking to apply for a credit card, loan or bank account you will find that this is easier said than done. However if you do your best you can begin to improve your rating to make yourslf more trustworthy.

You may feel that there is nothing that you can do and that the best course of action is to simply do nothing. After 7 years things will improve and you can go back to normal. However this is unwise because you can start to make repairs to your credit score immediately. There are a number of different measure you can opt for and there are also consultants that can assist in this.

Before you do anything else you should request your credit report from Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. You are entitled by law to request a free copy every 12 months. You can also visit annualcreditreport.com which is a certal website for all three credit agencies and allows you to make a request centrally.

When you receive the copies you requested you can then look through it very carefully to see if there are any errors. It could be that they have got your address details incorrect or there are credit cards listed you never applied for. When you spot errors you ought to notify the corresponding agencies to have them update their details.

If you want to apply for a credit card you will need to look at options that are on offer for those with terrible credit scores. There are some credit cards that are "secured" whilst there are others that are pre-paid. The pre-paid cards are great because you can only spend that amount of money that is on your balance. So there is no worrying about whether you can afford to pay off the bill.

Make sure that you pay any bills in a timely manner so that it doesn't work against you on your credit reports. Over time if you have been keeping your credit very clean you will see your rating improve and banks will feel they can trust you more and more.

If you are ever in the mind to apply to credit again, you should talk to a human being with the company to find out if you are likely to be eligable. They will have a better idea of whether you will be declined or accepted. If you simply apply online you might be rejected and every time you do this it will show on your credit report. This really doesn't look good at all.

OK, so you are now living the life of a bankrupt but please see this as an opportunity to take better control of your finances. All too often people don't understand what they are doing with their money and that's how they get into trouble.