After bankruptcy, get a credit card. Get a couple.
Getting back to good credit is one of the five ways bankruptcy gives you a new start. The bankruptcy itself helps quite a bit, because the old debts stop chasing you. But to really improve your credit score you have to get and use two or three after bankruptcy credit cards every month. Using credit responsibly leads to a higher credit score, than just having no debt.
Getting an after bankruptcy credit card, using it, and paying in full, is a good way to improve your credit.
I reccomend getting about three after bankruptcy credit cards, using them each month to charge something you need, like gasoline or groceries, and paying them in full.
About the time of your bankruptcy discharge, you will get some after bankruptcy credit card offers in the mail. But you should compare those with offers you might find on the internet. I think bankrate.com is a good place to shop for credit cards for people with bad credit. (Right after bankruptcy you are a person with bad credit; if you follow these steps, you soon won’t be.)
When deciding what card to apply for, keep in mind that you are planning to pay the card in full every month. That means you really do NOT care what the interest rate is. You won’t be paying interest because you’ll be paying it off each month. What you want to low or no application fee; and low or no annual fee.
If you can only get approved for one card as soon as the bankruptcy is discharged, that’s ok. Using that first after bankruptcy credit card for a few months, charging and paying off, charging and paying off, will raise your score. So better offers will come your way.
Here’s a sample of a credit card offer one of my clients got in the mail, about six weeks after her Chapter 7 bankruptcy was discharged.
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