Credit Restoration After Bankruptcy – How to Repair Your Credit After Bankruptcy
Credit restoration is the process of working with a company that can help you remove inaccurate information from your credit report that could be hurting your score. The goal is to improve your credit score, which will make it easier to get loans and mortgages with a better interest rate. In addition, you may be able to lower your debt-to-income ratio by paying down your outstanding balances.
A credit restoration company can also work with creditors to try to get them to remove inaccurate late payments on your account. Late payments are one of the most common errors that can damage your credit score. Credit restoration companies can dispute these errors on your behalf and often successfully have them removed from your report.
Many people use the terms “credit repair” and “credit restoration” interchangeably, but they’re actually two different things. The term “credit repair” refers to any company that offers services for a fee to fix problems on your credit report, while “credit restoration” specifically deals with getting inaccurate items off of a credit report that are dragging down your score.
While a credit restoration company can help you correct errors on your credit report and even negotiate with creditors to have negative items removed, they typically charge a fee for their services. Depending on the company, the fees can be fairly high, but you can do most of the work that they do for yourself for free by following the FTC’s guide for DIY credit repair and these tips for building credit.
It can take a while to repair your credit after bankruptcy, but it is possible to get your scores back up to where they were before. In order to rebuild your credit, it’s important to focus on the factors that have the biggest impact on your score, such as making your payments on time and keeping your utilization low.
If you can’t do it on your own, you can always turn to a credit restoration company that specializes in bankruptcies. These companies can handle complex issues like multiple bankruptcies and judgments in bankruptcy, and they can also negotiate with creditors for you to have inaccurate late payments and other items removed from your credit reports.
Remember, if a company claims to be able to restore your credit after bankruptcy, it’s important to ask for proof. There are many scammers out there who will claim to have the power to clean up your credit, but these services are illegal. A legitimate company will be able to provide you with a copy of your credit report from Equifax and TransUnion, and they’ll work on removing the negative items that are lowering your score. It’s also a good idea to get your credit report from Credit Sesame, which is free and has the added benefit of allowing you to monitor your credit and receive personalized tips for improving it.