[dolfinrose]

It stays 10 years on your credit history. My husband and I almost considered bankruptcy after having to let our house go, and relocating to another state. We took a look at our bills and our credit history and found that besides the house which was a forclosure at $60,000 we would be able to dig ourselves out and not have to do bankruptcy.

Heres what we did:
First and most important get frugal, no
Dispute any bills that were not ours on our credit report and were over 7 years old

listed bills from newest to oldest and called creditors and worked out a settlement or pay off amount

Stayed current on all bills and any extra money went to pay off all debts with the snowball effect.

once all old bills were paid off except old house, we started working on the current bills, and paid off cars also.

This took us almost 3 years most of which were done in the first year 1/2 but we did it, not only did we have the worst credit you can imagine and a bankruptcy would have made it worse. By doing this our credit got much better, and we were able to buy a house 3 times bigger then what we had before, and have 7 credit cards now. Yes we still have a forclosure on a house but it was 5 years ago now and mortgage companies don't look at that to much after 3 years, if you don't have a bankruptcy.