Help on finding a car loan

[mdo23]

I was just wondering if anybody could tell me an good place to start to get a loan for a car. FICO scores are horrible, and embarassing. Mine is in the 400's and wife's is just a hair over 500. Roadloans wouldn't approve us. Also, we are currently waiting on our discharge papers. Should have them within the next month. Any advice would be great. Also I forgot to add that it isn't absoutly necessary that we get one right away, but at least after we get our discharge papers. Also, I am a member of the Credit Union where I work. Would they be able to help?

[BassBoy]

First, you should wait until you are discharged. Most dealerships/lenders will not finance you if your presently in BK. Next step is to pull your credit report after your discharge and make that all of your accounts are reporting correctly. Just a note: If there are errors on your credit report, this could raise your scores once the errors are corrected. Then I would give it as much time as possible after your discharge before you go car shopping. Meanwhile, and if I may suggest, edmunds.com has a massive amount of information for consumers about what to expect and what to watch out for, ESPECIALLY THOSE WITH CREDIT PROBLEMS.

Now, all that aside, when it comes to buying a car after BK, there are so many of us with diferrent experiences. One of us may have been approved with one lender, but one of us may have been rejected by the same lender. Some got really nice interest rates, while others may have higher rates with the same lender. It all depends on the individual circumstances. There is no straight answer here.

[mdo23]

I figured that waiting until we were discharged would be the best option. I'll browse around the Credit repair area and see if i can find some ideas on where to start with that. Thanks for your input BassBoy

[SinkingFast]

We actually started working on clean up before Discharge. Right after our 341, we signed onto True Credit and started disputing online with TU and EX.

We've got all the balances to zero on TU. Only 1 acct left showing a balance on Hubby in EX. Or maybe it's the other way around. Whatever. You get the idea.

Just doing the disputing, several CC's didn't validate on both TU and EX so it's as if they never existed. We've done 2 cycles of disputes. You dispute and then it takes 30 days for the investigation. Our 2nd investigation period is just ending.

Haven't done anything with EQ yet. Will have to change monitoring services to do that one online, or physically write letters of dispute. Haven't decided the best approach yet.

Still some work to do on EX and TU. Accts are showing Charged Off, which they weren't prior to BK. Gotta get that fixed.

Scores last January were running right at 680. That was carrying a boat load of debt. CCCS pulled our scores as part of our post BK Debtor Ed Cert process. We were mid 500's coming out of BK. TU and EX are both back up to 660's with the work we've done so far.

I'd suggest you work on clean-up and corrections in your Credit Reports before you go trying to apply for more credit. One hard pull can be a 10 point or more ding on your scores.