My credit score after filing bankruptcy

Last January, my husband and I were told our credit scores were in the 400’s–478 to be exact. 1 year later, how do we measure up? Well, not so bad. First off, let me say that after owing so much and losing pretty much everything–the last thing I want to do is apply for credit or anything like that. I truly believe that the better your credit is, the more credit you get, and the more trouble you get into. The purpose of getting our score and credit report is for 2 reasons:

• To make sure everything since the BK is being reported accurately which I found out is not–not at all.
• Curiosity. In the past, we both loved seeing our high credit scores and were proud of our on-time payments and good credit history. Obviously, we let that all go down the drain once we we let that first credit card payment be late. After all that we have been through, we no longer care about credit scores or credit reports, but we were interested in knowing if what they say is true–after we file BK, our scores would jump. Did they? Well…

My score is 644 and my husbands is 631. OK, not great credit scores BUT not too shabby. Our scores would be a lot higher if things were reporting correctly. I want to take the time to go through it and post here because I think it can be useful information to anyone who is curious about how filing bankruptcy will affect their credit. The problem is–I am confused as heck on how to handle “cleaning up” our credit reports after filing bankruptcy. I am going to research more before I start disputing anything and may have to contact our BK lawyer to see what he says. Here’s why:

My husbands credit report:

1. The bankruptcy is only showing up under hubby’s name only as a public record–not mine. Almost all of his creditors show up as ” Included in Chapter 7 Bankruptcy” Some of them are still showing 120 days past due.
2. The car that we have as a joint account-the Civic that we kept is showing up as “Included in Chapter 7 Bankruptcy”–closed account and they are not reporting anymore for him. We want it to report–one purpose of keeping the car was so that he can re-establish his credit.

My credit report:

1. The bankruptcy is not showing up under my name. In fact, all of my accounts show either charged off, transferred, sold, or have some kind of negative mark on them . Some are still showing 120+ days past due. So one of the negatives for me per FICO is that I am currently delinquent with some accounts–about 11k. Huh?
2. The repo’d car is showing up as a revolving credit line that still has a balance owed. They did put “voluntary repossession” on the notes but never cleared the balance. It should read “included in Chapter 7 BK” . However, the Civic is showing up under my name as an active revolving credit line-and they are reporting that I am paying on it(which that is good).
3. My house that I did a short sale on shows as–I don’t even understand how they are reporting it. The notes say “Paid for less than full balance”–closed or paid account/zero balance. Then it shows repossession/foreclosure.

It seems my credit report is just all screwed up. My husband and I both have an inquiry on there from 6/09 that we are still trying to figure out. It is a bank but neither of us has applied for anything. I have a call into our leasing office to see if they ran our credit when we transferred apartments in June. That is the only thing I can think of. However, the inquiry clearly states a name of a bank that neither one of us does business with…hmm? That one I will be following up on.

Everything else…well, I am just not sure what to do yet. Usually when I see things wrong, I just dispute them. However, I am not sure why my BK is not showing up. Is it because we are married and it only shows up under my husband? Also, we never got reaffirmation paperwork to keep the Civic and they do not bill us, but they report my payments to the credit bureaus.

If all this sounds confusing…it is. I have loads of questions and I am not sure where to direct them. Looks like I got some work cut out for me to get our credit reports all cleaned up. I’ll keep my progress updated here of course, whenever there are any changes.

If I don’t care about credit or credit scores, why proceed with all of this? Honestly, because it is all such BS this whole credit reporting system. I busted my ass for years to pay on time, every month to keep my “good credit” and high credit score. I filed for BK for over what…$100k less than a year ago and my score is almost up to where it was when I was the “perfect” credit card holder. It sickens me actually. Geese, my score would probably be even higher if things were reporting correctly.

Another reason is, this whole world seems to be going by credit these days. If you want to get insurance or even cable TV, they want to pull your credit. I want to make sure everything is right on there.

My last reason, so I can share my experiences here with you. Some people care about their credit and I get it. I use to. Maybe my ramblings here about it give someone else a sense of direction…

I’ll post more when I have updates.