For newbies who want to know what a Credit Matrix is - look inside & see mine!

[debtmonster]

For those of you who are new to bankruptcy and what to know what a "Credit Matrix" looks like, I took the liberty of scanning mine and uploading it for you to look at.

The people in the matrix are all people whom were sent bankruptcy notifications whom were included in my petition. Yes, even the IRS gets notified, even though I was not going bankrupt on them. All addresses for every creditor and collection agency you wish to be notified is included on the list.

My Credit Matrix

Take a look at some of those. I pulled these down from the PACER system and converted the PDF to JPG's so I could share them on Photobucket.

For some of the people, you can see that the court mails notices to numerous addresses for the same company to make sure that all of your bases are covered. If you look at mine, you can see that University of Phoenix received notifications at multiple addresses. Plus they send copies to you and your spouse as well as your attorney. I removed these items from the list for privacy reasons.

Tell me what you guys think about those. Did a lot of you have that many people on your matrix?

[justbroke]

I had 64 items, and some are indeed duplicates... for American Express... at the same exact PO Box! If I were to remove the dupes, there are about 50 unique addresses (just under 50).

[dspii]

Wow...it's true we're not alone in the credit universe...one question though...how many of those creditors came by way of unsolicited offers in the mail? They way I have it figured, had I not gotten an offer to extend credit about 100 times over the years, I might only have had 2 cards that I applied for.

[southernbelle]

WOW debtmonster, that's an impressive matrix. I think mine was about 8 or 9 pages because I had so many dup's and insisted on contacting the original creditor as well as all secondary collection agencies, etc.

My approach was overkill because I kept huge binders full of old notices, bills and invoices so that I could have the addresses of any/all creditors that contacted me so that they could go on my matrix. I didn't want to leave anything to chance and I think it worked because I hadn't had any contact from any old creditors personal or business since I filed BK.

[debtmonster]

WOW debtmonster, that's an impressive matrix. I think mine was about 8 or 9 pages because I had so many dup's and insisted on contacting the original creditor as well as all secondary collection agencies, etc.

My approach was overkill because I kept huge binders full of old notices, bills and invoices so that I could have the addresses of any/all creditors that contacted me so that they could go on my matrix. I didn't want to leave anything to chance and I think it worked because I hadn't had any contact from any old creditors personal or business since I filed BK.

That was the smart thing to do. I would include every address you could find.

The worst that could happen is that a person in one city and state would get the notice, log into the system and mark you at a zero balance. Then another clerk, possibly in another city and state would get another notice, log in to mark you at zero balance and see that you were already marked as zero and just disregard the notice. But if that first clerk didn't do it, at least the 2nd clerk would have done it for you.

I was keeping track of all of my creditors from years back. I had them all in a file along with the name, address, phone # and account # owed. I was thinking of bankruptcy many years back but held off once I started making good money. We bought our first house and we had absolutely nothing in it. We spent all of our money on the house.

Then the recession came and you see what's been all over the news. And now here we are.

A lot of these were zombie debt from over 10 years ago. I got tired of new CA's coming after me every so often that I was glad to just NUKE all of them with a bankruptcy. For the first since since 1992 or so, I've been at peace with the creditors.

Almost 40 days or so until discharge... I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!

It's been so many years ago, I can't remember how many of them were solicited offers. Not too many. Maybe Orchard Bank or something from 8 years ago.