What are the steps in building up and repairing your credit?

Answer 1

request your credit report from all three of the major credit reporting agencies, they will supply them free on the first request. Upon receipt of your credit bureau's, review each of them for erroneous information. Write letters to each of the agencies requesting any and all erroneous or old (over 7 years old) information be removed from your report. It is a tedious and time consuming process but well worth it in the long run.

Answer 2

1. Get the credit reports from Equifax, Transunion and Experian.
( can request it online), find out what your credit score is. A poor score is below 400, fair 500-600, good 600-700, excellent above 700

2. Review report for errors and send in a dispute letter for each of them. The credit agencies have excellent websites with tools to help you do this.

3. Pay off the creditcards with the highest interest first and so on.

4. Do Not close your accounts, do not use your cards and only use the one that you have had the longest for just emergencies. The reason for not closing the accounts is because if you have a total credit line between three cards of $5000 then this looks good but if you close one card then your total credit line will go down by that one card.

5. Do not apply for any more cards or loans or anything that will touch your credit report. Everytime there is an inquiry on your credit, your credit score goes down.

6. Pay your bills on time.

7. Do not fall into the trap of credit services offering to clean up in a short amount of time.

8. Once you have pay off a debt, obtain a letter so you can send it to the credit services as proof.

Good luck, it takes patience, discipline and time.

Answer 3

#1) Pull all your reports. Not online, request actual physical copies. They usually contain more than what an online report does. This will give you a start on where you need to go with your reports. Also, keep them. Never toss them. They are proof later on if you need them to refer to if you ever get into a legal situation regarding your credit (lawsuit etc).

#2) Dispute. Dispute anything that is not correct including, balance amounts, lates, etc. If you have only one or two lates, I would call your creditor and see if you can get them removed via goodwill gesture, or send a goodwill letter. You can find some great letters on some of the credit boards like creditnet.com and creditboards.com.

#3.) Collections? If you have any collections on your account or anything that should not be there, send a DV (debt validation) to the creditor asking to prove the debt. If they cannot, they have to remove the debt off of your report by law.

#4.) You have rights - check out http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/031224fcr... for more info.

#5.) check out some of the posts on creditnet.com and creditboards.com for assistance.

#6.) If you have no credit, or want a temporary boost - have a family member or really (really, really, really) close friend add you in as an authorized user on their credit cards. Make sure the balances are not high, otherwise this could hurt you more. The higher the available credit, the more your utilization will go down on your report - therefore bumping your score.

#7.) Avoid unnecessary inquiries. Hard pulls can hurt you, so avoid applying for new credit cards until after you buy your home.

This of course is a shortened version of things you can try. Research info on those links I provided you. You can increase your score spending just a short amount of time per week, sending letters to creditors etc. I increased my score over 100 points in less than 6 months. Depending on your situation, this could take shorter or longer time, but at least you have somewhere to start. Good luck!

Answer 4

It takes a lot longer to build up and repair credit than it does to destroy it. You will need to pay all bills on time (this is extremely important) and have as little credit card debt as possible. Every inquiry done on your report (like if you apply for a loan) affects the score negatively. You can charge items every month - but not more than you can pay off at the end of every month. It can take years to repair damage and only one or two months of negligent bill-paying habits to destroy it. I do loans for a bank and I know how all of this works. Best of luck to you.

Answer 5

Request A Copy Of Your Credit Report

Review it for erors/mistakes etc.

Contact The Credit Reporting Agency to correct any errors

Contact the credit company to correct errors

Contact the credit company to close open accounts not in use and ask that Accounts in Good Standing Be Reported

Practice Good Credit - get rid of revolving credit like credit cards, charge cards, financing credit etc.

Pay more than the minimum payments

Limit applying for credit

STOP USING YOUR CREDIT CARDS.

Answer 6

The best way is to keep your balances on credit cards NO MORE THAN 30% of the high credit limit. This will show the lenders (creditors) that you have control over your credit and your not living exclusively on credit cards.

Answer 7

Make sure that you have all your bills and other items paid off (ON TIME) other things you can do is if oyu have a credit card, pay more then the minimum amount, and also pay some onto the bill before it comes due.

Answer 8

Go here and register for your "FREE" credit reports that you
can get once a year. Don't pay any money unless you want
to take advantage of the other offers:
http://www.freecreditreport.com/

Credit Cards are dangerous (spending money you wished you had),
so be careful and be wise.

Answer 9

Try creditboards.com for detailed information. Some of the steps you can take is to dispute erroneous and out dated information in your report...seven years from the original date of delinquency for debts, ten years for judgments...creditboards has a ton of information so give them a shot.

Answer 10

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good luck!