The first thing you need to do is pull one credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com (it’s a free site and you can pull them once a year). I would suggest that you start by pulling one of the big 3 at a time. The reason is that they all pretty much report the same thing so if you do them at four month intervals you can get a pretty good idea of what is on each one.
Once you have pulled the first one, you need to dispute all the incorrect information. All accounts that were included in your bankruptcy should be showing a $0 balance and the notation “included in bankruptcy.” There should be NO notations of late payments.
So (for example), you pull the Equifax report first. It shows several accounts that were listed in your bankruptcy without the correct notations. You can dispute the information on-line. The best way is to just send the reporting agency the copy of your discharge that I’ve attached that shows each entity the discharge was sent to (to prove they knew of the filing). Just follow the directions for disputing the information.
The credit reporting agency will do an investigation and SHOULD correct all the information. The investigation can take 90 days or so. Then pull the next free credit report from the same site and check what is currently being reported.
I suggest people pull their credit reports every four months in rotation (since you get one from each of the agencies for free every year) just to make sure nothing pops back up.
You can keep an eye on your credit score using the simulated score at www.creditkarma.com. This is a free site that also gives a lot of good information.
Finally, please be sure to review the financial tools at www.hummingbird.org (where you took the before and after filing courses). They have many good budgeting and financial forecasting tools.