How to Remove a Bankruptcy From Your Credit Report
One of my readers recently asked me if there was a way to get her bankruptcy removed from her credit report.
The answer is that no, there isn’t. At least not legally. But beyond that, there’s a deeper issue at play here. A lot of people worry about their credit scores and their credit reports. They worry about past delinquencies. They worry about their public records. They spend countless hours trying to get information removed from their credit reports.
My advice: You are worrying about the wrong thing.
You see, items that are older than two years—even major items like a bankruptcy—don’t matter nearly as much as the behavior you have taken in the past two years. A lot of credit “repair” companies have their clients spend hours and hours of their lives trying to suppress every single derogatory item on a credit report.
I don’t agree with that strategy. First off, it’s illegal. The Federal Trade Commission itself says, “No one can remove accurate negative information from your credit file. It’s illegal.”
Second of all, even if you do somehow manage to skirt the system and get negative information suppressed, it will rear its ugly head later on down the line. And in the future, the credit bureaus will be unlikely to spend their time helping you remove any true errors from your credit report.
My third point is that it’s just not where you should be spending your time. I know how attractive it is to think that you can erase your past, but you can’t. And if you spend your time trying to cover up the past, you will waste invaluable time living in the present and creating a better future.
There’s only one solution: Learn how to build credit. Educate yourself so that you have the tools to have a great score for life. Learn from your past, but don’t focus on what happened yesterday.
