Small boat - reaffirm or pay cash now?

[Tom_Mi]

Hi
I just had my 341 (ch7) this week. My small boat was exempted because my equity (only 1500) fit in my exemptions.

I owe 4500. I have a decent job and CAN pay for it. In the interest of rebuiliding my credit, should I:
-Reaffirm it to continue a history of regular payments?
-or-
-Just pay it off with exempted cash on hand that I have?

[justbroke]

Hi
I just had my 341 (ch7) this week. My small boat was exempted because my equity (only 1500) fit in my exemptions.

I owe 4500. I have a decent job and CAN pay for it. In the interest of rebuiliding my credit, should I:
-Reaffirm it to continue a history of regular payments?
-or-
-Just pay it off with exempted cash on hand that I have?

More than likely, regardless of whether you reaffirm, that credit line, on your credit report, is history! It will show as IIB for 7 years.

[Trixie007]

More than likely, regardless of whether you reaffirm, that credit line, on your credit report, is history! It will show as IIB for 7 years.

I'm confused... it's not being included from the sound of it, but will still show IIB?

Regardless of whether the lender reports it to the bureau's later, you can submit your pay history yourself to the credit bureau's.

[Flamingo]

What JustBroke is trying to say is what confuses a lot of filers. When you include a debt in your BK filing, regardless of whether or not you reaffirm or in a Chapter 13 pay outside of the Plan (i.e., mortgage payments), that debt was part of your filing and is included in your filing. Therefore, the credit bureaus can correctly list it as being included in your filing. However, you can dispute it and get it changed if you are persistent. We paid our mortgage payments outside of our plan and after discharge they were listing them as being "discharged" in our BK. We disputed stating we paid outside of the Plan, were never late before or after filing BK and the mortgages were not "discharged" in our BK but paid off early during our Plan during a refinancing. It worked; however, a year later the old information appeared and we are in the process of attempting to change it again. So whether or not it will work for everyone as to disputing to try to get the account out of the "negative information" listings on your reports is just probably situational.

[justbroke]

Thank you Pink Bird (Flamingo) for explaining it further.

[krielly]

More than likely, regardless of whether you reaffirm, that credit line, on your credit report, is history! It will show as IIB for 7 years.

Not always a hard and fast rule though.. We have an RV loan which has never shown as IIB, and is reporting on time payments. As others have said, they don't HAVE to report the ontime payments, but some of them do......
Likewise, as another poster mentioned, we are paying our mortgage outside of our 13, and they were not reporting payments, only "IIB". I disputed this a couple of times, and now it is reporting correctly - on time payments. Still says IIB in the comments, but at least they are reporting on time monthly payments.

to the OP: If I were you, I think I would come right out and ask the lender how they will report. If they won't report on time payments since the date of filing, I would say yes, pay it off if you are in a position to do so. Good luck to you!

[justbroke]

Not always a hard and fast rule though.. We have an RV loan which has never shown as IIB, and

Hence the preface with "more than likely".

Things always slip through the cracks and I'm sure that many people who go through Bankruptcy have at least one thing wrong on their credit report.

[ansky0007]

You have nothing to loose to reaffirm it if you are planning on keeping it and paying for it. I reaffirmed my GM Vehicle and they have said that once discharged they will go back to reporting it paid on time. I was going to keep it anyway so if they do report it again after discharge its only a good thing in my opinion.