Credit Dispute when it's in my favor?

[OneDayRicher]

Hello All!!

I hope I can get any advice or great guidance on this credit issue..

But I filed ch 7 with my husband, discharged Nov 2019. I am trying to clean up my credit to get a house by 2022. (We are hoping to use the VA loan btw)

I hear that I should check my credit report to make sure everything is reporting accurately, which I believe mines is. However, my husband was on plenty of my credit cards as an authorized user. Those cards are still showing on his report (with 0% utilization since I included them in my bk). They are also the reason why his scores are much higher since the oldest credit age on the card was about 10 years. I really feel like having these cards are working in his favor. Do I need to even dispute this?

I'm trying my best to get both our scores up to get a home.. at a decent rate.. I'm afraid fixing this will drop him down at least 100 points... (I tried the credit karma simulator).. What are your thoughts??

Any advice on how to get our credit up, will be greatly appreciated as well!

[shipo]

OneDayRicher, I am far from the resident expert around here, but it seems the prevailing sentiment here is, "Let sleeping dogs lie." In other words, unless a credit item is hugely detrimental, leave it alone.

Regarding the rebuilding credit thing; yeah, I'm there with you. Per the research I've done, credit cards, credit building loans, and stellar payment behavior are the best approaches.

With the above in mind, I jumped on a Secured Capital One card ($1,000 credit limit) almost as soon as I got my Discharge; that bumped my credit score by somewhere in the 20-30 point range (depending upon which credit agency was reporting) almost immediately. Unfortunately I discovered their ethical treatment of Secured card holders isn't the best and I closed the card less than two months later, and this of course dropped my credit rating accordingly.

The good news here is I replaced that CapOne card with a secured card from my bank; the cool thing about this is, I was able to get the card with a $5,000 limit, so that amount shows on my credit report, easily offsetting the closure. Yeah, I'm tying up $5,000 in a frozen savings account (interesting bearing) for a few months, but with the high limit, my monthly usage still keeps me under the 20% utilization threshold, and that looks good on your report as well. One other trick I've heard about, and am experimenting with, is to pay off the outstanding balance before your monthly statement is issued, thus further reducing your utilization percentage. That trick seemed to work with the CapOne card (I paid it to zero five times in the two months I had the card), so hopefully the same will hold true for my new card.

Keep us posted on your rebuilding journey; we can all learn from each other here.