It amazes me how often I have talked to customers who have had a bankruptcy and say that their attorney told them everything included in the bankruptcy would be cleaned off their credit report. Almost never is this true! The best way to get all this cleaned up is through credit repair. You can go to a credit repair service or creditrepair attorney who will charge you hundreds, maybe even thousands to get all this cleared up, or you can do it by yourself. Chances are, with the economy as it is right now, you don’t want to spend hundreds and I can understand that! I wouldn’t want to either. And the good news is you don’t need to!

Browse the internet and find some letter templates for credit report disputing. These are very simple to find. The first link that comes up under the keyword search “credit repair” is a government website that has a free sample letter. It is a pretty good template and it would be a good one to utilize. That website also provides sound advice that can easily be followed. There are a lot of websites that provide letter templates so they are easy to find. Or better yet, save yourself even more time and capital and do it all with creditblossom.com.

I look at it this way. Credit repair services and lawyers are going to charge at least 250 dollars. I have never seen one for less than that and most cost $600 to $1200. You can do credit repair on your own for the price of the stamps, envelopes, paper, and your time. The time is usually thetoughest thing to come by. If you are smart and conservative, before you go out and spend $20,000 on a new automobile, you might spend $500 to get the one you own running properly. It is just like that with credit repair.  Even that .gov site from the Google search advises that self-help is the best way to go. Something to bear in mind is that credit repair is not fast. Typically, it is going to take 45 – 60 days for all the responses to your letters to circulate through the system. If you spend 45 days doing it by yourself, another forty-five will not be all that different if you then opt to go with a credit repair company. You will probably have enough success doing the repair on your own, but if you do end up deciding to spend the cash and work with a credit repair company, you will still have saved yourself a bundle of money. Many credit repair companies will charge per item that you need to dispute. If there are a few things that you could not get fixed on your own, then you might work with a credit repair company on only those accounts. Naturally, you can also dispute the accounts a second time on your own. When you do that, make sure you include proof of your claim.

It is rare, but out of the thousands of credit reports I have seen, I have occasionally seen a client with a bankruptcy whose credit was reporting accurately after their bankruptcy. I would estimate that 90 – 95% of the time, people will still have balances showing up on accounts that they rolled into a bankruptcy. Of course, this damages the overall credit profile because it looks as if these items are delinquent after the bankruptcy. Delinquencies after a bankruptcy are highly to be avoided and they are viewed negatively by lending underwriters. When you send out the letters disputing these accounts, you should add a sentence or two that asserts that you included the item in a bankruptcy. You should reference the case number of your bankruptcy and the location of the bankruptcy court so the credit agency and the lender can see this information. If you are not able to do that, you will probably still see good results, but you might have better results if you add in the extra information.