That is a very common question that I receive and in fact I hate to give the typical attorney answer but it depends. One of the most important aspects of rebuilding your credit after bankruptcy is to make sure first and foremost that the creditors that were discharged in the bankruptcy are accurately reflecting that discharge. In fact, that’s one of probably the majority of what I do in my practice is I offer a free post-bankruptcy credit repair for not just our own clients, but any individual in Missouri or Kansas that comes out of a bankruptcy, and pull their credit reports and make sure that the debts are reporting the discharge, that’s the first thing you want to do. The second is if a consumer comes out of bankruptcy, but has a mortgage for instance, that mortgage typically with a few expectations is not discharged, but I would say probably 90 percent of the time that mortgage company is not reporting the mortgages it should. It should be ongoing and open and unfortunately, it’s showing discharged and that’s one of the biggest errors that we have to fix.

So after we get any errors corrected then I let my clients know that applying for a small credit card, a secure credit card, a small loan, a vehicle loan is one of the best ways to rebuild. But the key is to have open credit reporting timely payments on a monthly basis and some diversity in the portfolio, like I said whether a vehicle loan or another kind of installment loan, credit card, mortgage. Having diverse types of credit on a credit report is the fastest way to boost that credit score and help them kind of recover from the bankruptcy process and get them back on their feet.