How To Fix Credit Myself

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 7:26 pm

How To Fix Credit Myself
How To Fix Credit Myself

How To Fix Credit

The First step on How to fix Credit is to stay on top of your credit situation with the 3 Credit Bureau, request a tri merge Credit Report. Know what your credit says and make sure that what it shows is accurate.

Dispute all inaccuracies using a Credit Dispute letter, Remember, you must dispute True Credit Report inaccuracies. If the credit bureau cannot verify the inaccuracy within 30days, they have to delete it from your credit report per Fair Credit Reporting ACT. The Fair Credit Reporting Act ensures that accounts are reporting 100% accurately. This includes dates and Amounts exactly to the penny. There can be NO discrepancies and must reflect the accounts true status.

The most critical thing that you can do is to ensure the accuracy of each of your Credit Reports. After you are certain of their accuracy you can take other steps to improve your Credit Score. It is very important to read your credit report very carefully! Look for inaccurate, outdated, incomplete and negative information! Following is the list of common problems you may find in your credit report:
You can dispute inaccurate information with the Credit Reporting Agency. If you tell A Credit reporting agency that your file contains inaccurate information, they will investigate the items (usually within 30 days from the receipt of your dispute).
The credit reporting agency must give you a written report of the investigation and a copy of your report if the investigation results in any change. If the investigation does not resolve the dispute, you may add a brief statement to your file.
If you are legitimately uncertain about the truth of an item, then you can dispute it in good faith. The burden of proof is on the credit reporting agency to prove the accuracy with the creditor. Your dispute letter will generate an investigation, and if the creditor does not respond to this investigation, the entry in question must be deleted from your file.

Credit Bureaus have less patience dealing Credit Repair companies. They would rather deal directly with their clients. So when going the route on how to fix credit, dealing with the expensive Credit Counseling service actually has a negative effect and could back fire on you! They will pursue the accounts in a more aggressive manner than if you did it yourself.

If a credit reporting agency violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you may sue them in state or federal court. The dispute process is incredibly straightforward, and involves just a few steps:

Determine the items you want to dispute.
Send the dispute letter.
Keep accurate records, if needed.
Obtain the results of the dispute.

Here's why doing it by yourself, like we did, vs. hiring a credit counseling service is a much cheaper and more effective plan.

These programs charges high up front fees
They ask you to pay comfortable monthly payments subscriptions and are clearly proven by the FTC to be ineffective scams (Google "FTC credit repair firms " you will be scared to do death like I was)

credit bureaus have less patience dealing credit repair companies. They would rather deal directly with their clients. So when going the route on how to fix credit, dealing with the expensive credit repair companies actually has a negative effect and could back fire on you!.

About the Author

Stay at home mom of 3. Writer of the How To Fix Credit" Do it yourself "credit Repair ebook- with No Credit Repair Companies Feel Free to visit our site to get your Free "Do it yourself like us " Credit Repair Report, at : http://www.how2fixcredit.com/

How can I repair My Credit?

I am only 21, and in the past year I have screwed up my credit, but no I am trying to fix/repair it. What all do I need to do myself to clean up my credit. If I pay all my oustanding debts off will this help?

Well, you definitely have the right idea. What would also help would be to know what makes up your score:

1. Payment history- 35%
2. Total debt owed vs. avaiable credit-30%
3. Length of time establishing credit-15%
4. Types Of Credit established-10%
5. Inquiries and new accounts-10%

Ok, now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's get back to trying to Fix Your Credit.

What you should do is gather reports from all 3 agencies. It's important to make sure that what's tanking your credit is actually yours. A lot of times people just believe that their credit is so bad that they don't bother to check to see if it's even correct. This is when "little things mean a lot". A $60 collection that's not even yours could make a 15-20 point difference in your score. If you do by chance happen to find something that's not yours, be sure to dispute it with all 3 agencies, which you should be able to do online. Once you've confirmed which debts are yours, you should arrange them from most recent to oldest, smallest to greatest amount. The debts that are < 2 years are hurting your score the most. So with that in mind, you should pay them off, but try to negotiate a "deletion payment", which is a payment in exchange for getting it removed. Now the collectors don't have to do it, but it can be done provided you talk to the right people. If you're able to do this, make sure you get something in writing on their company letterhead before sending them any money. It would help if you have access to a fax machine so that they can fax you a copy and also send a hard copy certified mail.

I posted 4 links below that talks about this more in-depth.

Also, what you'll need to do is establish new credit to replace the bad. Remember it takes, Good Credit to build your score. Just paying old bills won't be enough. An easy way to do this is by getting a secured Credit Card. Now the reason it's easy to get is that you have to place a deposit upfront which is used as collateral to establish a credit line for you. The deposit isn't used unless the account is seriously delinquent, so you would repay what you charged just like a regular credit card. Also, you have more control over the credit line since you can increase the credit line by adding to the deposit. The easy way to use the card would be by treating it as if you only had a $50 limit and only use $20 each month, pay it off on time, increase the limit and repeat the process every month. Usually after a year of doing this, the card either converts to a regular card, or a better card's offered altogether, and most importantly, the deposit is no longer needed and is given back. I posted links to some secured card companies that should work for you

good luck!

Credit Q&A: Can I Fix My Credit Myself?