Credit card 7 years post discharge advice please!

TazFrank1

Hi Everyone,

My husband was declared bankrupt in June 2006 and was discharged Jan 2007 following a failed business

We are hoping to apply for a mortgage in the next 6 months (who knows how that will go!!) and in the meantime are wondering about applying for a credit card in his name to build up his credit score. We are a bit wary as obviously he doesn't want to apply, get turned down and then this show up badly when we try for a mortgage! But at the same time we want to build up his credit score as best we can.....

Has anyone any advice??? We're a bit afraid to click the 'apply here' button, incase it all goes wrong!

Thanks very much in advance

WLITC

I would have thought it would take more than 6 months for any credit card to 'build' his credit. Plus you don't want too many search on your reports close to applying. Ideally he should have started rebuilding his credit a few years ago. I was discharged in 2011 and have 3 credit cards (just got excepted for Capital One so might close one of them) and pay them all off each month. Between those and my mobile contract seems to be doing a good job of rebuilding my creditworthiness.

On a related note, has he checked his credit file on all three CRA's? (Experian, Equifax and Callcredit/Noddle). Its definitely work ensuring thats squeaky clean before applying too.

TheGardener

Number one - before you do anything if you haven't already - is check all the CRA's and see what his credit files looks like and if it needs cleaning up (did he do a file clean up after his discharge?) Look at the top of this board and read the sticky here https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/677875 about checking and cleaning up his files.

Worcsman

WLITC wrote: »

I would have thought it would take more than 6 months for any credit card to 'build' his credit. Plus you don't want too many search on your reports close to applying. Ideally he should have started rebuilding his credit a few years ago. I was discharged in 2011 and have 3 credit cards (just got excepted for Capital One so might close one of them) and pay them all off each month. Between those and my mobile contract seems to be doing a good job of rebuilding my creditworthiness.

On a related note, has he checked his credit file on all three CRA's? (Experian, Equifax and Callcredit/Noddle). Its definitely work ensuring thats squeaky clean before applying too.

I need to start rebuilding mine. I was discharged in 2010, still got 8 months left to the 5 year point. Do you know what happened to the sticky thread about cleaning my credit file?

I have a fair bit in the bank now, they offered to upgrade my basic card to a platinum account in 2012 which i took... Does that build my file back up? Would love to apply for a mortgage, we have the deposit but would be gutted to apply and get turned down. Thanks in advance.