Well, it's not under the circumstances that I would have preferred, but I'm back to the myFICO Forums after a few-years hiatus. Familiar tale to most of you, I'm sure: built up great credit profile, got the house, got the cars, got a little careless with spending, got hit with some unexpected large expenses, struggled for a while to keep everything under control, but eventually had to admit defeat and call up a bankruptcy attorney. To be sure, my wife and I are disappointed in our circumstances (to put it mildly!) but we made the best decisions to take back control of our financial situation and build ourselves back up -- hopefully a little wiser from the journey this time around. Fortunately I remembered these forums as a great rebuilding resource, so here I am once again!
Long story short: due to our incomes and individual debt loads between the two of us, our attorney had us file separate cases -- my wife filed CH13 with a 100% payment plan, and under that arrangement, I qualified for a CH7. She filed in Oct 2018, I followed suit in Dec 2018, and I just received my discharge in the mail last week. We managed to keep the house, one car on a loan, and the other car on a lease with two years left on the term. As far as remaining debts, we've got the mortgage, both car payments, and student loans for each of us, in addition to the CH13 payments for the next 4.5 years. So money is still a little tight for a while, but it's much better than it was before filing, and it allows us a great position for rebuilding savings, paying down our secured debts, and looking ahead to the future.
I've been keeping an eye on my credit reports (Credit Karma to monitor changes on TU/EQ and Experian for EX obviously) and there are still some updates that need to filter through, particularly for Experian... apparently still waiting for that report to display the discharge properly and to mark the auto/mortgage accounts as closed (I did not reaffirm). I'm planning to get a FICO sub restarted in a couple weeks, after I know that the reports are how I'd like to see them. My FICO 8's as of this morning were TU 579, EX 582, EQ 616. So I'm going to wait a little bit longer before apping for anything, which is fine since most of the pre-qual sites aren't showing offers yet (CreditOne is the exception, but I'd like that to be a last resort). However, I did set up a challenge for myself since I burned several major players -- Amex, Citi, Chase, CapOne, Synchrony, Discover, Wells Fargo to name a few. If there is one silver lining, it's that one of my accounts was not in use at time of filing and has survived the BK: my good ol' 13-yr-old Dell Preferred Account with a $6100 TL still intact! So I've got that going for me, and perhaps that's partly why my post-DC scores are as high as they are.
Anyway, I'll be recording my progress in this thread if anyone cares to read, comment, or offer advice. I'll probably give updates on my wife's situation as well, though the focus on her end is primarily to just square away those trustee payments. We're not planning to move or make major purchases over the next few years, except for a new car loan/lease in a couple years when the current lease expires.
Well, it's been just over a month since my discharge, so I thought I'd make an update. I've mainly just been monitoring updates on my credit reports and checking some prequals from time to time. Most of the old accounts are showing as closed and IIB, but there are some odd discrepancies here and there. For one, my mortgage (which I did not re-affirm) is showing as closed and IIB on my TU report, but open and current on EX and EQ. Also, my student loans (still in forebearance for another month according to the servicer) are showing as open, payment deferred on TU and EQ but as closed on EX. I suspect the student loan reporting will right itself once my monthly payments resume, but the mortgage discrepancy is weird... wondering at what point I should put in a dispute or just call the BK specialist at the CU who's in charge of my account.
Can't decide if I want to switch over to a myFICO subscription now or wait another month with the Experian sub that I have. I rather like the daily EX report and score retrieval, but I miss having daily score updates on all three bureaus. The EX sub refreshes in a couple days so I'll get to see my actual TU/EQ scores soon, they should be a few points higher than what I pulled last month... expecting 600-630 range, if my EX score is any indication. CK FAKOs on those two are currently 686 TU, 684 EQ. Oh, and I did enjoy some success in getting Experian to add my utilities to their report to boost my EX up by around 11 points, that was nice!
Regarding the rebuild effort: I put my old Dell account to use, making a very small purchase and letting that report so that I'm not at 0% utilization. I had been hoping for the Capital One prequal page to give me a positive sign the past few weeks but it still hasn't... and perhaps I shouldn't get my hopes up for the time being since I did burn them for north of $40k. Because I have some work travel coming up in a couple months that will greatly benefit from access to a CC, I sucked it up yesterday and threw down an app for the pre-approval offer I got from Credit One. Fully expected a $300 SL, so you can imagine my shock when they gave me an instant approval with a $2000 SL! So that's a bit of happy news 
They pulled EX, bringing my INQ count to 2.
Now I'm wondering if I should attempt to acquire a 3rd or 4th tradeline while the iron is hot... can anyone suggest good avenues for me to pursue in this 1-2 months post-DC window? I'd been thinking about trying for a Target Redcard, maybe Deserve (even though prequal is a bust), possibly BB&T or a similar bank? I'm avoiding secured cards for the near future since my extra funds are earmarked for some upcoming expenses (paying off the rest of this year's tax bill, taking care of some lingering medical expenses, etc.), but I think I'd be able to do that around the end of summer if I need to.
[EDIT by sarux3: This post was in response to an earlier commenter who ended up getting modded... I'm making a note here so that readers know why my post now sounds weirdly out of context.] I acknowledge and own the mistakes that I've made in the past, and I don't intend to repeat them. However, there is nothing wrong with taking a responsible, proactive approach to rebuilding a credit profile after bankruptcy, and it's not at all about "getting back into debt quickly". In my case, I am preparing to have to take on a new car loan or lease in about two years when my current lease expires, and possibly a new home loan in seven or eight years. I also need to have access to CC for work travel (typically reimbursed, but with a 1-3 week lag). In the long term: sure I would like to be able to qualify for prime cards with high limits again and be able to finance large purchases and whatnot, but that's so far outside my scope of priorities right now that I'm not even thinking about it.
FWIW, this thread is more or less a journal of my post-BK rebuilding strategy. I haven't detailed my savings plans here because it's not relevant to the immediate topic at hand, though I share your opinion that a healthy pot of emergency savings is crucial to the financial health of any household. (As a federal employee who had to go several weeks with heavily diminished paychecks earlier this year, I know that lesson more than many.) I enjoy reading about other people's journeys and learning from them, and I hope to be able to similarly contribute to the community through this thread. I welcome constructive feedback and advice, but if you're going to take the opportunity to soapbox and moralize, then kindly step off. Thank you.
@Anonymous wrote:Considering how much you burned CapOne for I think it's safe to say it's gonna be at least 1 year post discharge before they'd let you back in. I'd say with your CreditOne, maybe get a secured card or give Lendup or Avant a shot. You really only need 2 cards and no late payments for 2 years or so and you should on a better footing to app for regular cards from semi BK friendly banks. Though if you haven't burned Discover, give their prequal a shot, their supposedly semi BK friendly as well as long as you didn't burn them. I burned them so it's probably going to be 2 years post discharge for me. But if you didn't their secured card is decent and graduates. If you don't get the prequal for them then try 6 months or 1 year post discharge as IIRC they typically like to see a few cards on your report before letting you in.
And can say goodbye to Chase, Citi and Amex, they all blacklist 5 to 10 years according to the forums here, possibly even longer according to some folks when it comes to Amex and Chase. But give the Discover prequal a shot and keep an eye out down the road for CapOne. And if your eligible NFCU is pretty decent supposedly as well. And if all else fails, OpenSky secured can be a last resort option for the short term with no hard credit pull as well. But having a CreditOne, Discover, possibly NFCU, while waiting on CapOne would be a good start. After a year dump Credit One, have your discover graduate, maybe get back in with CapOne. If CapOne makes you wait even longer because of your history, you could then roll the dice on Synchrony through their Amazon card.
Yeah, I'm not expecting Capital One to open their doors so early -- HOPING, but not expecting You're right that a secured card is probably my best avenue right now. I haven't looked into Avant yet, and it appeared that LendUp and Ollo are invitation-only, so maybe I'll land on their pre-qual lists in the next month or so. I do have some military affiliation in the family (grandfather on mom's side), so NFCU is a possibility that I'd been considering. I was also thinking about BoA's secured card since that one is also known to graduate to unsecured in seven months (I think). My own bank, Burke and Herbert, has a similar program but theirs graduates in 13 months -- plus after burning Wells Fargo and having to move my checking/savings over to a different bank, I'm a little wary about having credit products so closely linked to my primary banking. Sadly, Discover is not likely to work for me since they were IIB. Same with Synchrony for a handful of accounts including Amazon.
Funny thing about Chase... when I was on the phone with them last fall giving them notice of my intent to file and my attorney's contact info, the rep was super friendly and said something like "Oh I'm sorry that you're in this situation right now, but we look forward to working with you again once it's resolved." And I had a good laugh about that after I got off the phone... yeah right, buddy, I'll see you in like 10 years lol.
@Anonymous wrote:You might hit up Merrick. They give you a SL and after 6m on time payments they double your limit.
I've actually been camping Merrick's pre-qual page for a couple weeks. No good news yet but I'm hopeful! I actually used to have a Merrick card with the double-your-limit offer several years ago, but they closed it due to inactivity. I was bummed about that at the time, but now I like to think that may work in my favor, since they weren't IIB in the end
Looks like mods moved this thread from the Bankruptcy section to Rebuilding Your Credit. I guess the topic straddles the line between the two, so ultimately it doesn't matter too much to me where the thread resides
I'm curious, does the 1-year-post-DC guideline for apping Cap One when they were IIB apply to their secured card as well? I wonder if it would be worth my time to try to app that product, since they offer CLI without additional deposit and (in some cases) are able to graduate to unsecured. I've also been strongly considering OpenSky today because of the lack of HP, but there's also no graduating that one. Hmmm...