Rebuilding Your Credit

[madcitymomm]

I'm thrilled with this months 8 point jump to 572, every little bit helps.  I declared Chapter 13 last year and have finally found the bottom of the pit, got my footing and am crawling out.  In my chapter 13, all the outstanding debt was included in a plan with monthly payments.  Some will be discharged after 5 years of payment s(with the exception of the balance of my student loans-see the last paragraph).

For now,   I'll be doing a dance when I get to 600.  I know that not all can be fixed on my credit report-so many negative reports, 3 judgements and a bankruptcy.  But today I started my GW letter writing campaign.  I'll take the babysteps and just keep paying ontime.  I have zero utilization (I've yet to get a secured card, just working on keeping current at the moment).  My letter writing is focused on the low hanging fruit-those items with negative remarks that I'm hoping might get removed.  If I conquer any of those I might move to my student loan mess.  Pre-bankruptcy I was in default, getting garnished.  Now I have a payment in my bankruptcy plan but I have $170,000 in debt and on my credit report every loan with multiple places is listed (every semester, every year).  It is sooooo confusing, Great Lakes, US Department of Education, EBMC, and others (like 40 different negative remarks-all student loans, sometimes multiple as they bounced from collection to collection).  I don't even know how to slay that beast as after my 5 years of bankruptcy payments I'll still have a horrid balance and probably not be caught up.   If anyone has advice or has worked through student loan messes, let me know.  

I'm hoping to at some point get to a score of 640 and be able to qualify for an FHA home loan. 

[Shogun]

Absolutely every little bit helps.  Keep it going and good luck!

[atarvuzdar]

Congratulations on your 8 point increase.

Definitely GW all of the accounts that you can. As for the student loans, that's definitely a problem. While it won't fix everything with your student loans you can try to GW any of the companies who are still reporting student loan information that aren't still servicing your loan(s). No guarantees that it'll work on any of them, but it's worth a try.

Good luck!