From what I have learned through all my reading on successful credit repair is that your best defense is a good paper trail.  If you live in a one-party state, set up your phone to start recording phone conversations with your creditors and file the recordings so that they can be accessed easily.

In addition, organize all your paperwork – you need to save copies of EVERYTHING – from copies of bills, letters you send, letters you receive, postage receipts, and receipts from certified and registered mail.  Following is how I organize my paperwork, and it seems to work really well in keeping things easy to track, easy to retrieve and easy to reference.

First of all, I would recommend getting the following – many of these can be retrieved from eBay for very cheap or Craigslist for free – or you may have these items laying around the house, or if you work in an office, your boss may let you take a few things as a personal favor – TRY NOT TO SPEND A LOT OF MONEY – the other part of credit repair is credit management!

• A file box that can hold hanging file folders
• Hanging file folders in 3 different colors (though one of the colors you will only need 3-5 folders)
• 5160 Avery Mailing Labels – I got a box of 100 sheets
• 5167 Avery Return Labels – I got a pack of 10 sheets on eBay
• 2 pocket folders (or just file folders will be fine too)
• Roll of transparent tape
• Stack of certified and registered mail receipts from the post office (so your mail is ready to go!)

As you can see from my picture, I have burgundy hanging folders in the front – this is for the credit reporting agencies, the green folders are for original creditors and the red folders are for collection agencies.  In each folder, I have copies of bills and letters in order chronologically with the oldest in the back and newest in the front.   Also, for the companies I have a lot of mail going back and forth to, I print a whole sheet of labels in Word and put that at the back of the file so I do not have to keep printing mailing labels for each letter – you use three labels for every certified letter, so it is handy to have them pre-printed.

Also, I organize my letters as follows:

Notice that the certified and return registered mail receipt are stapled to the letter.  In addition, I staple a copy of the postage receipt to the back of the letter.

When I send mail out, I get copies of my receipt – as many as I had letters that went out – that way, when I need to add up my postage costs for any particular debt, the receipts are all there and easily accessible – once you have the system set up, it is very easy to maintain.

In the picture above,  you may notice the green and black file folders in the front of the box.  The green folder contains letters that just came in the mail that I have to file or receipts from the post office that also need to be filed.  I also stick my most recent True Credit 3 in 1 printout in that folder which I routinely reference and make notes on as to what I want to do next.  The black folder has my return labels pre-printed with my return address, copies of my ID ready to send out if need be and papers I pulled out of the file that I need to make photocopies of for whatever reason.  In the back of the box, I store the tape (which I have to use over my labels because I got the super cheap ones and they peel really easily) and my stack of unused post office certified and registered mail forms.

It took me a while to get to this point, and even to figure out the best way to get organized, but I tell you, this system sure beats huge piles of mail in 5 different boxes randomly in different parts of the house.  People who are in debt get more mail than those that are not in debt – we need some kind of system to organize all the mail!