How to Remove Bankruptcies 2021 (The RIGHT Way)

2020 was a rough year financially speaking for a lot of people and honestly 21 ain't looking so hot either a lot of people had some really bad things happen to him financially recently and unfortunately for some people that included bankruptcies from a credit standpoint filing for bankruptcy is one of the worst things that you could do it destroys your credit score it can hurt your credit score by up to about 250 points and depending on what type of bankruptcy you filed that's going to stay on your credit report for between 7 to 10 years this is killer for your credit report and you would think that something this major would be pretty much impossible to actually get removed off of your credit report early but ironically that's not the case hi everyone my name is ben and this channel is dedicated to all things personal finance helping you earn more spend less and invest the difference now i know i've been doing a lot of credit repair videos lately i'm not specifically a credit repair channel but i realized that a lot of people had some bad things happen to them so we got to take care of this credit stuff that was caused by all this pandemic nonsense before we can move on to the promised land of saving and investing and getting ready for retirement or just otherwise living the kind of financial free lifestyle that we all deserve now when it comes to bankruptcies the first thing is we gotta understand how these items get on your credit report in the first place now unlike a lot of your items on your credit report like if you have a wells fargo credit card and you're not paying that bill like you're supposed to in that case wells fargo is going to reach out to the different credit bureaus and they're going to say hey this dude over here he ain't doing what he's supposed to be doing he ain't paying us and so the credit bureaus are going to make a note in their system and they're going to ding your credit score but that's not the case with a bankruptcy wells fargo isn't reaching out to the credit bureau saying hey we had this debt and now the bankruptcy court is dismissing it wells fargo isn't reaching out and in fact nobody is reaching out bankruptcy is nothing more than a court procedure and the court system like they're not reporting to the credit bureaus in fact they can't report to the credit bureaus under the rules of the fcra so what happens is these court rulings they're all public records right anything in the legal system is public records so what happens is there's a website called pacer and pacer is just an acronym it stands for public access to court electronic records and this is where all the details of all of the different court cases are kept and what happens is there is third-party data providers that go in and they just snoop around and pacer for any kind of juicy bits of information and then they're like oh man we see this guy over here he just had a bankruptcy and then they turn over to the credit bureaus and they're like hey mr credit bureau i got some juicy information i'll sell you and that's what they do the credit bureaus actually buy that information from these third-party data providers how crazy is that like these guys are snitching on you and you know what they say snitches get stitches but here's the whole thing that we have to keep in mind when these third-party data providers are reporting this stuff is it originally came from a public access website like literally anyone can log into pacer and see these court records so what kind of information can be in a truly public domain like pacer well i'll give you a hint of what you can't have in a public domain and that's your full social security number in fact pacer only lists the last four digits of your social it doesn't list the whole social so how does the credit bureau know that that was actually you that filed for bankruptcy and not just some other random person that shares the same last name and the same last four of your social remember the onus is on the credit bureaus to prove that it's you it's almost like the civilian court of law right you're innocent until proven guilty same thing applies in the world of credit the credit bureau has to prove that that was you having the same last four of a social is not proof that that was you all right so now that we've got that background information out of the way it's time to actually get these items removed off of our credit report so the first thing we've got to do is honestly we're just going to get a copy of the credit report from all three of the major credit bureaus experian transunion and equifax alright so just go ahead and print that out keep it for later we're going to get back to it all right and then what we're going to want to do is we're going to want to freeze all of these third-party data providers that seem to be ratting us out to the credit bureaus nine times out of ten it's going to be a lexus nexus so start by freezing them go ahead and freeze all of the third-party data providers but specifically you want to make sure you hit lexisnexis if you're interested in more information on all of this stuff be sure to watch this video right here once you're done watching this video it'll give you more hints and tips about freezing these accounts once those third-party data providers are frozen out it's time to clean up the personal information section on your credit report so pull out those three different credit reports that you printed out earlier and just look at the top section it should have all of your personal information so things like your name your addresses telephone number work history all that kind of stuff right so you want to get rid of 99 of that stuff there should only be one name one address one telephone number one place of employment now if you've moved around the country a lot it'll have all of your previous addresses listed up there as well we want to get rid of everything that is not current your current address specifically what we're actually trying to do is we're trying to distance ourselves from the address that you had when you filed bankruptcy so hopefully you've already moved from when you filed for bankruptcy but if you haven't it's time to move or at least fake it if you haven't already moved you have the same address that you filed bankruptcy from go down and get a p.o box open up a po box down at the post office and then start updating all of your accounts to that address go through and look at all the other accounts that are reporting to the credit bureaus any kind of credit cards you got your mortgage whatever it is that you got update all of those records to show that the po box is your address not your actual physical address you want everything going to this po box and the reason why you want to update all of these other accounts like your existing credit cards and all that kind of stuff is when you go to try to remove all these old addresses off your credit report they're typically not going to want to remove any address that is tied to an active account so if your credit card if wells fargo says that you live at 123 main street then they're not going to remove 123 main street as an address all right that's why you want to get this po box and update wells fargo now this process right here might take a month or a little bit over a month in and of itself all right because credit cards only report to the credit bureaus once a month so this process may take just a little bit of time but i trust me it is worth it once all of your accounts on your credit report are showing this new po box remove that old address from your credit report that was associated with this bankruptcy and this is really easy honestly all you got to do is write each of the three different credit bureaus a letter saying hey all of these addresses are incorrect please remove them from my credit report it really is that easy to get addresses removed the key is that you can't have any current accounts showing that old address as being your current address that's why we gotta update all of those accounts first and then ask the credit bureaus to remove these addresses now you might be asking yourself what's the big deal about removing all these addresses in the first place well when you're disputing your actual bankruptcy when we get to that point they're not putting sherlock holmes on the case right like they're not sending out a detective and doing investigative research and trying to you know see and prove that this person that filed bankruptcy was actually you they're just trying to link you to this bankruptcy in some way shape or form and as long as they can come up with some kind of a link between the two of you then that bankruptcy is verified that's what we want to avoid so how do we avoid that stuff we just distance ourselves from all of that information that was listed in our bankruptcy file right like they already don't have our full social we already established that they don't have our social so how else could they link you as a person to this bankruptcy well if the bankruptcy papers say that you lived at 123 main street and this wells fargo credit card that is yours also lists you at 123 main street like it's one of your old addresses in your credit report well now they've just linked you to this bankruptcy case so that's why we want to get rid of all of this stuff we want to eliminate your digital footprint it's like when you're watching a good spy movie and the good guys are you know looking through their fbi database they're trying to find the bad guy and they're like we can't find it this this guy doesn't exist that's what you want you want to not exist in any of their records because if they can't match you up with what's in this bankruptcy file then they can't verify it they cannot prove beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt that that person that filed bankruptcy was actually you and if they can't prove that it was you they have to remove it from your credit report all right so once the address that's associated with that bankruptcy has been removed off of your credit report it's time to actually send out a dispute letter to all three of the credit bureaus and dispute the actual bankruptcy now you don't have to have any kind of special verbiage or anything like that there is no fancy template letter that you absolutely must use you don't have to quote the specific rules or legal mumbo jumbo or anything like that just in plain english tell them that hey this wasn't you please remove it from my credit report keep the letter simple and to the point specify exactly what is wrong with your credit report that this was not you it's just somebody with a similar name and that it needs to be removed from your credit report now there's like i said nothing specific that has to be in this letter because i'm going to be real with you guys nobody reads this letter not a single human at the credit bureau is actually going to read this stuff it all gets scanned into a computer system and machine learning will read your letter and decipher what it is that you're wanting so keep the letter nice and simple now at this point one of two things is going to happen either they're going to remove your bankruptcy from your credit report entirely in which case congratulations you're done or they're going to come back and say that it was verified and therefore it will stay on your account all right so if it was verified that's not the end of the world we're still going to get this sucker removed it's just going to take us an extra step or two all right so if it comes back as being verified what you're going to do is you're going to send those credit bureaus another letter and you're just gonna ask them all right how was this verified tell me what procedure that you used in order to actually verify all of this information by law these credit bureaus only have 15 days to provide you the method of verification that they use to supposedly verify these bankruptcy proceedings on your credit report so go ahead and shoot that letter off and ask them for how they verified all of this stuff and i guess i should mention at this point that you don't want to dispute any of this stuff online or over the phone everything should be done certified mail usps reason being is twofold first the credit bureaus only have a certain amount of time to comply with your actions and if they don't comply in accordance with fcra rules you can actually turn around and sue them and get monetary damages for them jerking you around and not doing what they're supposed to do so that's reason number one why you want to do usps certified mail is because it time stamps when they receive it so if you just keep a copy of that you can go to small claims court and be like hey look judge they got my letter on this date and now it's been over the allotted period of time they still haven't done what they're supposed to it's an easy case in small claims court you don't need a lawyer or anything like that and the second reason though that you want to do this by certified mail is you want a hard copy of their response to how they verified this account if they just tell you over the phone like you dispute it over the phone and be like hey we disputed it and we verified it by xyz then unfortunately you have no way to prove that in the future that hey you said it was xyz that you verified it you need something in writing if it's not in writing it didn't happen so what they're going to do is they're going to send you another letter back in writing so you can prove it later of how they verified these accounts now realistically they only got two options all right nine times out of ten they're going to tell you that they verified it with the courts or some derivation thereof they verified it with the magistrate or they verified it with the the public records or i don't whatever they want to claim it as or they're going to say that they verified it using this third party data provider maybe alexis nexus all right so of the two options like i said most times they're going to say that the court verified these records and this is a super simple fix all right guys so at this point you can either go down to the courthouse in person or maybe just send them a self-addressed stunt envelope with a letter explaining what you want done but basically you're going to go down and you're going to ask them hey do you guys verify information to the credit bureaus because i have a bankruptcy showing on my credit report and they're saying that you guys verified this information do you guys verify information to credit bureaus and remember the answer is no they don't according to fcra rules they can't they don't verify this information to anyone so if you went down in person have them print out a letter something to that effect that nope we don't verify this stuff to the credit bureaus and just have them print that out on their you know letterhead or whatever or if you mailed the letter they'll you know attach it in with this self-addressed stumped envelope that you had sent and then you're basically gonna take that letter that the courthouse gives you and you're gonna shove it in the face of these credit bureaus you're gonna send a copy of that letter that the courthouse provided you along with a copy of the validation letter that the credit bureau sent you because remember they said that they verified it with the courthouse but the courthouse is saying we don't verify it you essentially caught the credit bureaus in a lie so you're just going to send those two letters back with another dispute letter and basically like i said just shove it in their face be like hey look you guys said you validated with the courthouse the courthouse is throwing the bs flag they're saying they didn't validate it so either you lied or something crazy is going on i demand that this item be removed off of my credit report and if it is not i will immediately file a complaint with the cfpb the consumer finance protection bureau these guys are the ones that make sure the credit reporting agencies and the credit bureaus are doing what they're supposed to be doing and at that point you've pretty well caught them in a lie they realistically don't have a whole lot of choice in order to remove this item or not they're basically stuck at this point and this bankruptcy should be removed off of your credit report and like i said if it's not for whatever reason if they still are giving you pushback then go ahead and file that report with the cfpb and send them the exact same stuff you sent the credit bureau send them the letter of validation that you got from the credit bureaus along with the letter from the courthouse saying that they didn't validate it send all that stuff to the cfpb and let them take care of it all right option number two if they don't say that they validated it with the courthouse maybe they say that they validated it with this third-party data provider right like maybe lexisnexis validated or something like that and then you're just gonna send them another dispute letter and be like all right well cool story bro like yes somebody had a bankruptcy like right like public records said somebody had a bankruptcy but that doesn't mean that it was me so prove that it was me specifically because lexisnexis is not the one validating that it was you specifically they're just reporting to the credit bureau hey look pacer this government website says that this person had a bankruptcy but the credit bureau themselves they are the ones that match that bankruptcy up to an individual they're the ones that put that bankruptcy to you specifically so how did they link that bankruptcy to you specifically they don't have your social and your address is no longer showing on your credit report so how did they validate and verify that that bankruptcy is actually yours they can't prove it you've already covered your tracks and so realistically they got no choice but to once again remove this item off your credit report and same thing applies if they don't send that letter off to the cfpb and file a complaint now this whole process might take a little bit of time because we might have to do several back and forth like i said we might have to do a couple of different letters to the credit bureaus but trust me guys this is well worth it to get these items permanently removed off of your credit report because this stuff is killer if you found this video useful be sure to subscribe leave a comment down below i love hearing from you guys it makes my day give the video a thumbs up it really helps the youtube algorithm helps channels like this grow and as always i'll see you all again next time thanks

Channel: Fluent in Finance

Views: 5,998

Rating: 4.9567099 out of 5

Keywords: credit repair, credit repair services, credit repair specialist, credit report, credit education, how to remove a bankruptcy, remove a bankruptcy from a credit report, how to remove a bankruptcy from a credit report, credit repair bankruptcy, how to remove a bankruptcies from credit report, how to increase your credit score fast, how to increase your credit score, bankruptcy removal, bankruptcy removal letter, credit score, personal finance management, removing a bankruptcy

Id: DYmPSN6T48U

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021