You already know how significant is your credit score and how it impacts many aspects of your life. Therefore, you need and want to increase your credit score. You’ll improve your credit score by applying credit repair methods. These credit repair tactics are tried and tested and proven to be successful.
Before I explore the required steps, it is important to mention you can do it yourself but you can also hire a reputable credit repair company. If you choose to hire a company, make sure they are experienced and have a long track record of success. At present, the most experienced credit repair company that proved to be reliable over the years and have very low fees is Lexington Law; I highly recommend them.
Getting Credit Report & Credit Scores
In order to have an effective plan you must know your current situation so you’ll be able to put your effort on the items that need to be fixed. For assessing your current situation, credit wise, you have to get a hold of an up-to-date credit report and credit scores from all 3 major credit bureaus Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. You are entitled for a free credit report every 12 month from each of the credit bureaus and you can get these reports online at www.AnnualCreditReport.com. These reports will not contain your scores and you’ll need to pay a small fee to have them. If you plan to hire a credit repair company, part of the setup fee is to purchase the credit scores.
Reviewing the Credit Report
When you review your credit reports, you are looking to find errors and wrong information. First, make sure that your personal information is accurate. Then, look at the accounts on the report and verify that you recognize them all as yours. Also, look for duplicate accounts.
Check the negative items on your credit report. Negative items can appear only for a certain period (with few exceptions) and then should drop off, so check if the negative items are accurate and if their dates are old enough to drop off from your report. Some of the negative marks that you are looking for are charge offs, collection accounts, judgments, late payments, bankruptcy etc.
Every time you find an item on your credit report, that either is inaccurate or that you are not sure about its accuracy, add this item to a list for further investigation. This list is the foundation of the credit repair process and serves you in the next step => disputing items with the credit bureaus for further investigation on questionable items.
Disputing Credit Report Errors
The law is on your side and allows you to request an investigation on any questionable item on your credit report. It is important to note that no one can delete an accurate negative item from the report BUT as stated above you are entitled by law to challenge any item that is questionable and you think that this item is either not accurate or that it is incomplete.
By challenging the bureaus with dispute letters on questionable items, they start to investigate your case. If the bureaus cannot verify the accuracy of that item within a limited time frame, they must delete it from your credit report.
Keeping Low Debt-To-Credit-Limit Ratio
The debt to credit limit ratio has a significant impact on your credit score. The relevant debt for this ratio is the short term one. This ratio represents the amount of credit that you actually use out of the total credit that you are entitled to. In order not to damage your credit score, you don’t want to max-out your credit limit. You should aim for keeping your debt to credit limit under 50% in order to maintain and increase your credit score.
Credit repair is possible and achievable; it requires consistency and requires you to take the right steps. If you are willing to put the effort in learning the exact details of the steps mentioned above, you’ll see significant improvement on your credit score. If you prefer to hire assistance then I strongly recommend to use Lexington Law’s services (you can have a FREE credit repair consultation from Lexington Law by calling 1800-293-3672).