Tips on Credit Score Repair

August 7, 2009 · Posted in Credit Score Repair · Comment 

Credit Score Repair: Read these tips on credit score repair and fix your bad credit.

Good credit is important to functioning in society today. When you have bad credit, life can be difficult. Unfortunately it is easy to make mistakes in handling your credit which leaves you with a low credit score. When you have a good credit score you have many more advantages when it comes to leveraging your wealth. Raising your credit score can be done.

First you want to obtain your credit reports from all three credit bureaus. You can do this by going to the Equifax website where you can order a 3 in 1 report that will show your records from all three credit bureaus. You can also find out what your FICO score is. You can even choose to monitor your FICO score if you want so you can tell how well your credit repair is working. Be sure to pull your records from all three bureaus. These are where your creditors report to but they may not report to all three so your reports may be different. You want to find out how many black marks you have with each bureau and investigate your reports for errors.

When you get your reports, go through each one thoroughly. This is vital to start your credit score repair.  A lot of the information will be identical but some will be different. You will also find that each bureau figures your credit in a different way and can give you a different score. Not all of your creditors will report to all three of the bureaus and you can never be sure which bureau report a potential creditor will pull so you want to repair them all. Make a note of every derogatory mark on your reports.

After this begin work on removing negative marks on your credit reports. Do this by sending hand written dispute letters to the credit bureaus. They make forms available for this purpose but you may get a better response if you hand write your dispute so the employee who opens it can tell it is a real dispute from you and not an automated letter from a credit repair company. Your dispute will be read by a real person at the credit bureau so you are probably better off to handle your correspondence in a personal way.

Attack the errors on your credit reports. When you get false information removed you might see a sudden jump in your credit score. If the derogatory remarks are valid then the credit bureau will not remove it if it is verified by the reporting creditor. In that case, you can contact the creditor directly and ask them if they will remove the negative mark. If you are a current customer in good standing, they may do so.

Decide to either make payments or let bad credit expire. It may be best to leave old bad credit marks alone. Most of them will expire and be removed from your credit report seven years from the date of last activity. If you dispute an old bad credit mark, it might re-age it so that the seven year clock starts all over again. This will make your credit score go down because it shows as a new bad credit mark rather than an old one.

Juggle your credit cards around and you might see a quick rise in your credit score. It is best to keep your available balance between 30% to 50%. If you have one card that has nearly zero balance and one that is close to being maxed out, move some of your balance over so that both of your cards are in the 30% to 50% range.

Please be careful with new credit lines and old accounts. Having an open old account on your credit report will be a benefit to you even if it is not currently active since the credit bureaus factor in how long you have had your credit established. New accounts on the other hand will probably lower your score for awhile after you open them. Your credit score fluctuates frequently depending on your actions, that is why it is so beneficial to monitor your credit. You can do that at the Equifax website by signing up for their Equifax Credit Watch Gold, plus it provides you with identity theft protection in the amount of $20,000.

Since you are reading this article, you know how important good credit is. These few steps can help you improve your credit and help you maintain good credit. You may think you need professional help from a credit repair agency, but it really isn’t necessary since you can do it all yourself. It is at least worth a try before you spend money on credit repair.

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March 25, 2010 · Posted in Increase Credit Score · Comment 

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You Can Improve Your Credit Score

For whatever reason the financial system in the United States is not well understood by most people. In particular the credit system and how it works is an area that most people simply don’t understand. While the average consumer doesn’t need to know the dynamics of how banks make money and decide how to loan invest their money (actually your money), consumers should know how their credit score is affected by the financial system and how to improve credit score.

At its simplest level, an individual’s credit score is basically a history of their financial transactions including their taxes paid, mortgage payments, car payments, and any other transaction that involved something other than a direct cash payment for item. The computer systems that run the credit reporting system have huge amounts of data on every individual who has ever applied for a loan or credit card, or for that matter who has ever paid a bill. For example, your electric bill is actually a form of credit. Most people don’t realize that even the electric company is a creditor. They provide you with electricity and expect you to pay for it after it has been used. So they are essentially extending credit to you for the electricity. If you fail to make your electricity payments, eventually they will report this to the credit reporting agencies it will show up as a derogatory entry.

Derogatory entries on a credit report of those entries that drop your credit score and also the focus of improving your credit score. Unpaid medical bills, unpaid utility bills, late payments on mortgages, or defaults on credit cards are all forms of derogatory entries. Of these mortgage payment history (if you’ve had a mortgage) is the one that has the biggest impact on your credit score. The assumption here is that if a person is late with their mortgage payment or doesn’t make their mortgage payment at all the emotional and not paying any other bills as having a roof over one’s head is considered a basic necessity today.

From mortgage payments everything else in your credit report secondary. Car payments are important as well. Again the assumption being that if you’re not making your car payment or close to defaulting on a car loan you’re probably in a severe financial crunch. In the hierarchy of payment priorities car payments rank second mortgages only because without a car people cannot get to the job and therefore cannot earn money to make the payments.

After house and car comes everything else. Retail store credit cards major credit card such as MasterCard Visa or Discover and medical payments for people who don’t have medical insurance will show up on the credit report. If you have late payments on any of these they show up as derogatory entries. If you’re current on all your payments that is also reflected on your credit report but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on improving your credit score.

One interesting note about your credit score is that you can have a low credit score because you don’t have credit cards, or have credit cards and don’t use them. If you make a habit of paying cash for everything and have the ability to at least get some sort of credit card the matter what the interest rate is, you should occasionally purchase something with a credit card (the amount is not important) and immediately paid off. This shows both the ability to get credit and a willingness to pay. To have a positive impact on your credit score take both of these actions.

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