We all strive to maintain a good credit history and no one sets out to have bad credit. However, circumstances in our lives may leave with no other alternative.  It could be as a result of illness, death in the family, loss of employment, injury, or whatever the case you now have bad credit.   This can be a huge hurtle in improving the quality and standard of living as employers, landlords, insurance companies will run credit checks.   You want to apply for a mortgage or a car loan?  Your credit history is vital to getting approved or in the rate you will receive. 

What can we do to repair your credit?

You have two choices in you journey to repair your credit.  You can do it yourself or you can use a paid credit repair service as there are several.   Doing it on your own can be time consuming but it’s not difficult.

Repairing credit on your own

You should order a copy of your credit report and find out exactly what the FICO scores are and if the information is accurate.

Things to look for

As you look over your credit report pay close attention to inaccuracies.  Late payments recorded in error, inaccurate balances, accounts reporting that don’t belong to you or any derogatory information.

Derogatory information can consist of late payments, charged off accounts, judgments, collection accounts, bankruptcy and others.  All of these will dramatically bring your score down

What next?

List all your bad credit accounts from oldest on top to most recent on the bottom and separate them from your good accounts.   Pick your disputed accounts and complete the credit dispute letter.  When your order your credit report from the three major bureaus they typically have a dispute form attached.   Please note that each bureau may report different information and you may not want to send a standard dispute letter to all three.  If you are overwhelmed by this, you can find some self credit repair kits that can walk you through these steps.

When completing the credit dispute letter be sure you include the account number, account name, your address, social security number and reason for your dispute.  Once the bureaus receive your dispute they are obligated by Federal law to investigate it with the credit provider.  The credit provider must respond or account will be removed and therefore increasing your score.

Other important factors

Your balance relative to your limit and number of credit inquiries are other factors that can be the difference between good credit scores and low or bad credit scores.

If you are still tentative about doing the self credit repair, there are several publications you can purchase online for a reasonable price that will help you improve your credit.