Credit Score after Ch7

[overthedebt]

Does bankruptcy bring you to a certain score immediately after filing? Or does it matter how good your credit was before bankruptcy? Just trying to understand whether having good credit and paying right up to filing makes a difference or not. I keep reading that many of you stopped paying a while before filing. Right now, I'm current on everything. The extra $$ I'd have by not making those hefty minimums would certainly help. Thanks in advance.

[ERue]

I stopped paying immediately after I called the lawyer to do our initial consultation. He said that was fine at the consultation since I would pretty much be throwing money away after that.

[Johnifer]

once you retain a lawyer you dont need to keep paying

[dingdong]

Paying up to the point of filing can be beneficial ( and I only mean score wise not BK wise) in that you won't have late pays and chargeoffs on your CR.

Generally it goes like this.( and this is a very general statement)

If you had good credit before BK, your credit score will take a large hit right after filing, but you will have the benefit of not having any late pays/CO on your CR. Your DTI ratio will improve and generally it is easier to recover score wise with the BK PR being the only derogatory info on your CR


IF you have very poor credit B4 BK, your score may actually improve a bit with filing, but you will still have all those credit issues up to the point of filing, plus the BK, so unless you go into CR mode, your score will probably remain fairly static until things drop off or you proactively work on your credit.

THe BK will hurt you no matter what, and you generally become a second class citizen credit wise for awhile.

Some lenders/creditors are BK friendly, some aren't.

[Amy26]

The thing I find amusing... is most of my creditors hadn't reported to all 3 bureaus...ever... so, like my equifax report was way more accurate than the other 2. I've been monitoring activity on my reports... and all the sudden I keep getting notifications about "new accounts have been listed on your credit report". I'm like...huh? And I go look and its all the creditors I reported in my bankruptcy FINALLY reporting to the other 2 agencies now that I'm filing... it wasn't important to them to report me positively to all the bureaus before...but now that its negative... all these "new" accounts are showing up.

[music12]

really?? i thought it would be a violation of the automatic stay to report anything to the credit bureau after filing. IF they had reported you before you filed, then after you filed they can only say it was included in bk. if they never reported you before you filed, i don't think they are allowed to report at all.

can someone confirm if this it correct?

if i am correct, then amy can complain to these people and demand they take it off her credit report.

[Amy26]

Hmm...that I'm not aware of... they had been reporting but only to 1 agency. Now that I filed I am seeing them add the accounts to the rest of my bureau reports. That is against the rules? I'm not sure what exactly they are saying on the report... I have this 3 in 1 credit monitoring thing with equifax that alerts me to any activity on any of my 3 credit reports but it doesn't really tell me much if it was on transunion or experian.

Like for my Citibank card... it was only on my equifax report and now I got two alerts... 1 for experian and 1 for trans union saying "a new account has been opened in your name".

[ela805]

The thing I find amusing... is most of my creditors hadn't reported to all 3 bureaus...ever... so, like my equifax report was way more accurate than the other 2. I've been monitoring activity on my reports... and all the sudden I keep getting notifications about "new accounts have been listed on your credit report". I'm like...huh? And I go look and its all the creditors I reported in my bankruptcy FINALLY reporting to the other 2 agencies now that I'm filing... it wasn't important to them to report me positively to all the bureaus before...but now that its negative... all these "new" accounts are showing up.

Same here Amy. I guess that's why we need to keep up with our credit reports and make sure the good stuff is showing up instead of only focusing on getting the bad stuff amended.

[Amy26]

hehe yea, I never thought anything of it because most places use the equifax report anyways. I have a little ticker at the bottom of my equifax page that says how many times each report has been pulled (from each company) within the current year, 2 years, etc... and like the equifax one is 118, transunion is like 40 and experian is like 12.