I am a recent newlywed and my credit was/is bad from a previous marriage. How do I go about clearing my credit and is it possible to keep my bad credit from harming my new husband's?

You have nothing to worry about concerning your less-than-perfect credit affecting your new husband's. Credit bureaus maintain separate files on each individual, so credit histories will not be combined when you marry. Only jointly held accounts or accounts for which one spouse is an authorized user on the other's account will appear on both credit reports. Your individual accounts remain your own.

When you apply for credit jointly (e.g., for a large loan that you'll need two incomes to support), then both of your reports will be reviewed during the application process. Even then, however, information from each report, while it may impact the outcome of getting the loan, will not become a part of the other person's individual credit history. This can work to a couple's advantage in certain instances where one person's credit is less than perfect-as in your situation. If you don't qualify for a large loan together, your husband may be able to qualify for a smaller one in his name only.

As for "clearing" your bad credit, the only real way to do this is to work on building up good credit. Everything included on your credit report is part of an historical record of credit-related activity and, therefore, cannot be removed until the established reporting period has passed. Since acceleration of this process is not possible, your late payments will have to cycle off your report 7 years from the dates on which they occurred.

However, considering that lenders are generally most interested in recent payment patterns (the past two years or so), if you exercise good credit habits now, you should be in better credit shape sooner than you think.

For information on building credit, you may wish to visit the Credit Basics. In this section, you will find several articles that may be of help to you.