Based on my experience in helping thousand of Oklahomans through bankruptcy, a person who files bankruptcy usually has very little trouble getting new credit after the bankruptcy is completed. In fact, I have had clients obtain new car loans while they were in bankruptcy.
Many creditors have told me that a person who files bankruptcy is actually a better credit risk after the bankruptcy than before. This is because of two simple facts.
First, most people who decide to file bankruptcy already have poor to down-right bad credit. If you can’t borrow money at a good interest rate right now, filing bankruptcy is not going to do any more damage to your credit than has already been done. Actually, the process of filing bankruptcy can be the first step on the road to improving your credit.
Second, most people come out of bankruptcy with much less debt than they had going in. As long as you have a source of regular income, most creditors will be more than happy to lend you some money. They know that you don’t have a lot of other bills to be paying now. And what’s more, they know that you can’t get another bankruptcy discharge for quite a few years, so they feel pretty safe in lending you money.
So even though it sound strange, the real problem is that credit is too easily offered to people just out of bankruptcy. And because of this, I regularly caution my clients to be wary of all of the new credit offers they will receive and to be extra-careful not to get themselves in serious debt again.
