Shayne Sherman

Removing a bankruptcy can be one of the biggest challenges that you will face when it comes to repairing your credit rating. The reason for this is, in order to remove a filed bankruptcy from your credit report you must remove every last account on your credit reports that mentions you filed bankruptcy. What you will usually find is that 80% or more of the accounts will be easy for you to remove from your credit reports while there will almost always be a few "stickier" accounts that just won't go away without a fight.

The First Step:

You must review your credit reports carefully and highlight every account that mentions "including in bankruptcy" or "bankruptcy" in general. These are the accounts that you must remove to completely rid your credit file of the stigma that goes along with filing in the first place? If you have moved since you have filed you would first want to remove the old address or addresses to make the credit repair process easier.

The Second Step:

Now you must go through and effectively dispute every account that you found in step one. You will want to find errors in the way the accounts are reporting and dispute these errors. For example, if the account balance is incorrect or the credit limit, dispute that as inaccurate and ask the account to be deleted permanently. Since the majority of creditors will not validate the request from the credit bureaus on accounts that they have closed due to being included in a bankruptcy, you will find a lot of the accounts will simply go away forever using this method. This process can take several months, but you must be patient. Your patience will be worth it.

The Third Step:

Now we are going to take a look at how the bankruptcy is stored. Understanding how the filing of the actual bankruptcy works will help us to successfully get the bankruptcy removed from your credit profiles. After a period of two years your file is moved from your local court house at which it was filed and moved to a central storage place. If you visit your local court to ask to see your file, you will have to submit a request for them to retrieve the file from the centralized storage location. You must have them order it. It will take about one week for it to arrive. Once they receive the file, they will notify you of its arrival. During this time is when you will want to dispute the bankruptcy with all three credit bureaus. The credit bureaus will contact the central storage facility and low and behold the file will not be there for them to verify it. You must delay your local court in going to view the actual file as long as possible. The credit bureaus only have 30 days to verify the file.

For more information on how to have a bankruptcy removed from credit please visit my Lexington Law review page.

A collection account can stay up to 7 years for the last date of activity on your credit reports. The last date of activity is usually the date of the missed payment that sent the account into collections. The date of last activity will update if any mutual activity occurs on the account such as a partial payment etc.

The best method for removing a collection from your life for good would be to negotiate with the collection agency or the original credit if at all possible. They have the ability to close the account for good and remove it from your credit report thus increasing your credit scores. You should try to negotiate a payment based off of the age of the account. For example if the account is a 3 year old cell phone account for $500 you might want to try to negotiate a payment of $250. Always start lower than you think they might accept knowing that you can work your way up if at all possible. Now if the account is only 1 month old then you might not be able to negotiate at all and only a payment in full would work in this case more than likely. The most important thing you can do in the negotiation process is to ensure that no matter how little you pay, the account is update to show as paid in full and closed. Even better, you should try to get the account removed from your credit reports all together. Make sure to get everything in writing before you send any payment!

If the collection is already paid but still reporting on your credit report then your next step would be to dispute the collection at the credit bureaus. It is important to remember that even though you paid the collection off, it is still legally acceptable to be reported to your credit bureaus as long as the account is 100% accurate. You should dispute something about the account as inaccurate such as the balance or the date of first reporting. Since the account is closed out at the collection agency more than likely they will not respond to a request from the credit bureaus and the account will be removed.

Hopefully, by following these simple steps you can help yourself to delete a collection account from your credit reports and improve your credit scores. Please take time to visit my Lexington Law review page.

If you fall too far behind on your car payments then a car repossession may occur on your credit reports. That is where the creditor will take your car back from you since an automobile loan is a secured loan. The loan is secured by the automobile.

If you are behind on your payments, but your car has not been repossessed as of yet and you see no way that you can catch up your payments or arrears, then you should become familiar with the repossession laws of your state in which you preside. You may not hide your vehicle to avoid repossession or you can face criminal charges for doing so.

You can still get your car back once it has been repossessed if that is something you are interested in doing. Of course this all depends on your original finance contract and / or the lender you are dealing with. Please check with the rules and bylaws of your state as they will override whatever the lender might be telling you.

In most states, the creditor can repossess your car without notice even if you are only 1 day behind! Of course if you have a grace period in your contract then they will have to wait longer than one day to repossess your vehicle. It is important to understand that in most cases, the lender does not want a depreciated asset back (your vehicle) they would rather have their payments.

The most important thing you can do as a consumer that is falling behind on your car payments would be to make sure you keep in contact with your creditor. Most of them are willing to work with you as again, they would much rather have your payments then a car that is worth less to them then what you owe on the note. Secondly, become very familiar with your states repossession laws as they can differ considerable depending on the state you reside in.

If you already have a car repossession on your credit reports then please visit my car repossession on credit information page that explains the process of removing a repossession from your credit reports.

Having a clean credit report can make your life so much easier and offer numerous more financing opportunities down the road, the whole time saving you a ton of money financing everyday things along with big ticket items such as cars and housing. Even the rates you end up paying for car insurance or the ability to find a great job more than likely are affected by your credit reports and your credit scores. Just try to rent a nice apartment while having collections and judgements on your credit!

The negative items on your credit reports might be there because of financial decisions that you had made in the past or they could be legitimate errors made by creditors or the credit bureaus themselves. Regardless of how these negative items found their way on your reports we will talk about identifying them and also the steps needed to remove them most effectively.

How to Indentify Negative Items on Your Credit:

It is easy to see how errors may find their way to your credit reports when you think of the sheer amount of information that finds its way to the credit bureaus everyday. There are literally millions upon millions of accounts that get reported every week. That is why it is so important to keep an eye on the items that are being reported on your credit reports. I suggest you sign up for a monthly credit watch program such as MyCreditKeeper.com or several others that are available for around $10 per month.

After you have received a copy of all three of your major credit reports including, Equifax, Trans Union and Experian you should go through line by line analyzing for errors. Check your personal information along with the public records sections and accounts. You want to look for anything that is potentially negative to your credit rating such as late payments, judgements, charge offs and collections. Are your addresses and personal information correct? Are there more than one variations of your name or social security number?

Correcting the Errors and Removing Negative Items:

You have several options here including; writing letters yourself and corresponding with the credit bureaus on your own, or hiring a professional credit repair service. I personally recommend the later, as it is best to have someone versed in dealing with the credit bureaus and creditors daily handle your disputing process. Professional credit repair companies know the ins and outs of credit as that is what they do every day. Of course if you have time to study and learn the laws that are in place to protect you as a consumer than handling your own credit repair might be the answer for you. If that is the case, I recommend finding a credit repair forum as you will have many questions.

Credit history can make or break you it seems. It is so important to keep on top of it and not let it overwhelm you. Please go here for my review of Lexington Law Firm, the number one professional credit repair company in the world. To learn more about how to clean your credit report including removing bankruptcy or a foreclosure please visit my credit repair forum.

Contrary to popular belief, a bankruptcy does not mean the end of good credit forever. It is quite possible to repair your credit after you have filed bankruptcy. For the most part, it might even be easier than if you still owed the bad debts and were trying to clean up your credit reports. You must realize that cleaning up a bankruptcy on credit will take a little time and patience as all accounts associated with the bankruptcy will have to be cleaned as well.

First of all, if you think that cleaning up your credit reports once you filed bankruptcy will be easy, please think again. There are some things that you must learn before attempting to clear your credit or you can and will do more harm than good. You must also realize that re-establishing credit after your bankruptcy will take some time. Please do not expect this process to take 24 hrs!

Please follow these simple proven methods to help to clean your credit bankruptcy on credit including:

Keep any accounts open that DO NOT have to be included in your bankruptcy. The account history of these accounts will simply help to make your credit score increase faster than if you closed every account that you had. So, if you have any credit accounts that have good payment history and little or no balance, please keep these open or re-affirm them in your bankruptcy papers. The positive history will stay on your credit report.

Hire a professional to clean your credit reports from all errors. The simple fact is once you file bankruptcy; your credit reports will be full of errors. A lot of creditors simply do not update accounts once they have been written off. These accounts will be easy for a professional credit repair service to remove from your credit reports. Removing as much negative as possible will make the positive credit that you have and establish that much more powerful.

Slowly apply for new credit once you have seen a fair amount of the negative items cleared from your credit report by the professional credit repair service that you hired. The new accounts (along with any old accounts that you might have kept open) will offset any negative information that you might still have on your credit reports from your bankruptcy. Remember the 30% rule of thumb: Keep all balances on credit cards below 30% of your available limit to have as much positive impact as possible! Do not run up the balances of your new cards!

Filing bankruptcy is not the end of the road. Getting a fresh start is not as hard as you might think if you have the proper tools and the motivation to get started! I personally recommend Lexington Law Firm for credit repair as they have helped over 500,000 people to clean their credit reports and repair their credit! For more information, please visit my Lexington Law review page.