Credit repair begins with you. Many people have bad credit and they don’t even know about it or they think they have no way to repair it. Everyone has the right to see their credit reports and to repair their credit score.
I have listed the top 5 steps to credit repair and how to restore your credit today:
Top 5 Steps To Credit Repair
1. Pay Your Bills On Time – This sounds like a no-brainer, but I can’t stress how important it is. One little 30-day late payment will set you back a year or more. Set up automatic payments with all your creditors. If you can’t make a payment, call your creditor and make something work so that they won’t report it to the credit bureaus. You would be surprised how many times this works.
2. Dispute Negative Items – The main reason most people get denied loans is because of past negative items. A lot of the time these items aren’t even yours because of identity theft, reporting errors and other factors. The Fair Credit Reporting Act was implemented to allow consumers the right to dispute or verify any listing that is on their reports. 4 out of 5 credit reports contain errors, make sure yours is not one of them.
3. Increase Debt to Limit Ratio – Two ways you can do this, keep your balances low and increase your limits. Always make sure your balances are below 35% if possible. Increasing your limits will help the ratio as long as you don’t increase your debt on those accounts too.
4. Diversify Your Credit – This can difficult for some that can’t get a mortgage or car loan. Start with the basics, get a checking account with your bank with a line of credit. Get a credit card attached to your bank account. Then get a merchant store card. All these things will help your score by diversification A mortgage and car loan are the best ways to diversify, but take time to get up to.
5. Contact Your Creditors – Creditors want their money too and they will negotiate to get it. Make sure you have talked to your creditors before paying off a bill. Use your leverage to negotiate the removal of the negative items upon final payment. (more…)