My next step in rebuilding my credit should be?

[ando35]

I had a ch 7 in 07 and I am rebuilding my credit. I am up to 630TU and 640 EX from 600's. I raised it with a secured credit card. I have 9 baddies and they are all included in the bk. I also have a state tax lien i paid off and a utility. Showuld I work on those first? What about getting a loan?

[llecs]

IMO, skip the loan. Aside from interest payments, there really isn't any benefit unless it remains open and installment is a tiny part of FICO scoring and mix. I've seen plenty of folks hit 800 with no loans reporting. If you only have one CC, I would consider another. After the second, I'd consider a 3rd and I'd stop there. I'd stagger account openings by months, though.

I'd GW the baddies. Send a PFD to the utility if unpaid, otherwise GW them if paid.

Not much you can do with the BK. I'll defer to others for the tax lien.

[RobertEG]

Getting your file clean of major derogs will, in my opinion, be the best step.

I presume that your current debt is now either paid, the accounts timely, or prior unpaid debt was discharged

The normal way to get earlier CR removal of derogs is to write the reporting party, and ask for their good-will deletion.  For fairly apparent reasons, I would not expect much good-will from credtiors who had your debt discharged by the BK.  As for any other, start a GW campaign.

As for the tax lien, have you called the taxing authority and asked for GW deletion based on its payment?  Or did some other party post the reporting of the lien to the CRAs?

[ando35]

Thanks for your time, both of you.Yeah, I guess I will have to start the GW letters for the tax lien which was paid and a PFD to the one with HSBC card that went into collections and then was releases by bankruptcy. They sold it to a collectiuon agency. I didn;t know you could offer to pay them to remove it from their file. Can I also do that with the credit card companies who I didn't pay bc ch7? It kinda sounds like graft...

[llecs]

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@ando35 wrote:

Thanks for your time, both of you.Yeah, I guess I will have to start the GW letters for the tax lien which was paid and a PFD to the one with HSBC card that went into collections and then was releases by bankruptcy. They sold it to a collectiuon agency. I didn;t know you could offer to pay them to remove it from their file. Can I also do that with the credit card companies who I didn't pay bc ch7? It kinda sounds like graft...

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I wouldn't send a PFD to any account that was included in the BK. IIRC, there are some specific rules or laws about that. I'll defer to others on the specifics. But you can send a GW since they report $0. You need to weigh the age though. Start with the youngest first.