11 days until dischage AND...............

[newgirl]

All of a sudden my mail box has CC offers in it every day. Why would this happen prior to discharge?
I would like to have a CC just for emergences even if its a 500 credit limit.
When is the best time to actually apply? Now, after discharge, after cleaning my credit report? I dont want to lower my credit score anymore that it already is with the Bk.
Whats the best direction to go at this point? What have you all done?

[SinkingFast]

Take a look at your Credit Reports first.

You can get free copies at http://www.annualcreditreport.com. See how everything looks there first.

If your Creditors aren't reporting IIB, with $0 balances, you might want to sign up for a Credit Monitoring Service and do some disputing to clean up your Credit Reports.

With the CC's,............ Start small. Orchard and HSBC are the most liberal when it comes to getting a CC post BK.

Also, you can open a Crown Jewelers acct. Charge some little baubble, pay it off immediately, and get them reporting OK, OK, OK on your Credit.

CapOne would be the next step up. Although CapOne has a big flaw. They don't report your Credit Limit. So if you charge $500 on a $1K CL, it looks like you're utilizing your entire credit line.

From there, Juniper would be the next level. They are backed by Barclays Bank.

Washington Mutual is probably the toughest. Once you get to the point you can get a WaMu, you're doing fairly well.

A couple others that folks get are Target Red Card and Hooters. Target is hit or miss if you can get approved with them. Hooters is backed by Merrick Bank. They are also BK friendly.

[BassBoy]

The CC offers you're receiving are probably from a "soft pull" of your credit report and the creditor may not know all that much about you....so....when you finally go ahead and apply, the creditor will see the real picture and you'll probably get denied.

As SF points out, you'll need to do some credit report diligence beforehand.

[newgirl]

Would it make sense to get my credit reports now or wait till actual discharge to start working on it?

[SinkingFast]

We started working on clean-up right after our 341. Didn't even wait until Discharge. It was something NasCar20Fan had tried that worked for him. So we gave it a whirl too.

By the time Discharge rolled around, several accts had fallen off our Credit Reports. Just like they were never there to begin with. Lots of info had been corrected and we were well into our 2nd round of disputing.

As BassBoy said, the Creditors don't know if you'll qualify or not. They buy lists of names from the Credit Reporting Agencies. Everyone with a score of 600-650 or some similar score range. When you actually apply is when your individual specifics are considered.

Start with your Credit Reports. Make sure they're cleaned up.