All too frequently acquiring good credit is a necessary part of life. We all need to have good credit in order to meet the requirements for mortgages, car loans and credit cards. However, for many of us past economic troubles and times of financial challenges have damaged our good credit. There are some steps we can take to begin to repair our credit and re-establish some stability to our monetary lives.
Before you start to repair your credit you will need to get a copy of your up-to-date credit report from each of the three foremost credit-reporting agencies, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. You can take advantage of the complimentary report that you are permitted every year or you can pay a fee and obtain either a separate report from each company or a tri-merged credit report that comprises all three. It may be easier to evaluate the information on your credit reports if you have it all on one report.
Once you have your credit reports, you will have to scrutinize them for inaccuracies and invalid information. It has been expected that as many as 70% of all credit reports do have mistakes and inaccuracies so there may be some clear mistakes that you can attend to without delay. You should also check for older and out-of-date accounts that have passed the statute of limitations in your state. Many times you can get those listings deleted on that basis alone.
Check your report also to make sure that your uppermost credit limits are reported. Many companies fail to account or often underreport credit limits. This can be destructive to your credit score as a large proportion of your credit score is based upon your presented credit compared to the credit you have utilized. Try to continually keep your balances below the 20% mark of your accessible credit. You can also achieve a quick credit score lift if you can get a lender to raise your credit limits.
Many times duplicate accounts will show up on a credit report. They may not be reporting negatively but they still affect you negatively because it shows that you have more outstanding debt than you really do. Make sure to dispute duplicate accounts because the uppermost credit scores go to the folks with the most accessible credit and the lowest debt.
Be vigilant about paying off old collection accounts and charge-offs. Information is reported on the date of last activity so an old collection account that is in arrears may in fact be better for your score than one that is paid up or even paid off because of the last activity date brings all the harmful information forward. Collection accounts are many times passed on and sold to other businesses and each company may list information on your account. When they no longer own the account they are expected to delete the information but many times they do not follow through on that later. Make sure that the accounts on your report are legitimate and not duplicates.
Make positive that you address and dispute all mysterious things on your credit report. Many folks have other people’s information showing on their report. This regularly happens if you have a common name such as Smith or Jones but it can also happen to anybody if the numbers on their SSN get transposed. Make sure that the credit listings on your report belong only to you and that they are correct and correspond with your own records.
You can also start building new and better credit. The best way is to get a credit card, either a ordinary card or a prepaid type. The worst thing to do is to get credit from a department store, furniture store or anything related as that form of credit is looked upon as a negative rather than a positive for credit scoring purposes.
You may find that it is helpful to hire a specialized credit repair company that has the expertise to assist you in the best possible manner. You can do some credit repair yourself but you may find that it is more efficient to utilize the services of a specialist.
