Credit reports may affect your Home Mortgage rates, refinancing, credit card approvals, apartment requests or even your job application.
Get The Latest Copy of Your Credit Report — Before you can start repairing your credit, you have to know what you need to repair. Annual Credit report is authorized by Federal law to provide FREE copy of your credit report from three major credit bureaus once every 12 months. Request Your Credit reports at AnnuamCreditReport.com
Review Your Credit Reports for Errors — HOW TO REPAIR YOUR CREDIT once you have your credit reports, read through them completely. Become familiar with the information contained in each of your credit reports. They’ll all look very similar, even if you’ve ordered them from different bureaus. Each credit report contains your personal identifying information, detailed history for each of your accounts, any items that have been listed in public records like a bankruptcy and the inquires that have been made to your credit report.
Deciding What Needs Repair — Here are the types of information you’ll need to repair:
Incorrect information, including accounts that aren’t yours, payments that have been incorrectly reported late, etc.
Past due accounts that are late, charged off, or have been sent to collections.
Maxed-out accounts that are over the credit limit.
Dispute Credit Report Errors — You have the right to dispute any information in your credit report that’s inaccurate, incomplete. When you order your credit report, you’ll receive instructions on how to dispute credit report information.
Tackle Past Due Accounts –Your payment history impacts your credit score more than any other factor, it’s 35% of your score to be exact. Taking care of these is crucial to credit repair. Your goal is to have all your past due accounts reported as “current” or at least “paid.” Contact your creditor soon to figure out what you can do to get back to current.
Bring High Account Balances Below Your Limit — Your credit utilization, a ratio that compares your total debt to total credit, is the second biggest factor that affects your credit score. It’s 30% of your score. The higher your balances are, the more it hurts your credit score. Your credit score responds better to credit card balances that are less than 30% of the credit limit, below 10% is ideal.
Be careful about closing credit cards — Rarely does closing a credit card help your credit score. In fact, closing a credit card is more likely to hurt your credit score, especially when the account has a balance.
Get Lender Advice — A good lender can pull your credit reports and give you advice on repairing your credit score.
Get help from consumer credit counseling— If your debts are overwhelming, creditors aren’t willing to work with you and you can’t seem to come up with a payment plan on your own, consumer credit counseling is an option for getting back on track. Check out 360CreditCounceling.com
