What is the best way to repair my awful credit?
While dealing with a long history of low paying jobs and irresponsible behavior I managed to reuine my credit. I now have a pretty good job with much higher wages, and need advice on how to repair my credit before my husband decide to buy a house in the next 3 years. Please help!!!!!!
Public Comments
- pay your bills on time. Dont pay them all off, dont max your credit cards either as both will lower your credit score. Pay off collections. Pay rent with checks and save them, front and back.
- Pay off everything, this will increase your dept to income ration. Close accounts you don't use. Pay all your bills on time, Keep 2 credit cards and use them for a few purchases each month, and pay them off at the end of the month. As tj-taylor below says pull you report, you can get one report from each company free per year, and so can you husband. I pull one from each company every 3 months, my wife does the same, alternating the companies, since our credit is joined, we keep a pretty good view of our credit report.
- How do you know your credit is bad? Most people assume but don't really have a clue! Start with pulling your credit yourself at www.annualcreditreport.com . Everyone can do this...free, once a year. What you will see is your "flat file"... that is, everything good and bad that is in your credit file. You won't get your FICO but that isnt important at first. You can select to view one, two or all three bureaus. I always suggest to view all 3. Print out your "flat files". Take some time to review everything! I bet you'll find some surprises! You might find wrong information including your personal info, old accounts, wrong balances/owed. Most surprising to people are the accounts that are NOT there, good and bad! Each credit bureau allows you to dispute wrong info online...take advantage of that!! Once you have your reports in your hand you can get to work to clear it all up! If there are accounts that went to collections agencies or are late PAY THEM OFF. Don't settle for less than you owe, a tactic (option) that some collection agencies use to collect the debt. That can be worse than the late pay. Sometimes you can play "Lets make a deal" with companies: tell them you are prepared to pay off your debt in exchange for them removing their "mark"on your credit file. Some will tell you they can't do that (oh yes they can!) others will say they will report a "zero" balance to the bureau (but the "mark" is still there). Most of all: start paying your debts on time now. Cleaning up your credit takes a little time. By law those late pays and collections can stay on your bureau's for 5-7 yrs. With some hard work and a little time and lots of commitment...you can have a great credit report in less time than that. And most lenders just look at the last 2 yrs.
- Find out what AM radio station Dave Ramsey is on in your town. Listen to him. He's been in bankruptcy and gives EXCELLENT advice! daveramsey.com
- To Repair credit score Your credit score is based mostly on: 1. Length of credit history 2. Payment history. 3. Ratio of credit used to available credit. 4. Number of credit inquiries you authorized. If you cancel your card, you'll be hurting your credit ratio. (#3). You want to deliberately keep your oldest credit card open, even if you never use it. You want to always pay the minimums of each loan on time every month. You want to keep your available credit high, but actually only have balances equalinig 25% or less. You want to keep your credit inquiries to a minimum. Try for no more than 3 or 4 per year for any type of loans. You do these things and your credit score will quickly soar into the 700s. ------------------------------------------------- http://www.bestcreditrates.net
- You can raise your credit score. First you have to learn how to eliminate bad spotd from your credit. You can do it yourself or take help from experts. Here are some tips How to Evaluate and Raise Your Credit Score http://fhurl.com/b1420 Best of luck
- It's good that you have an adequate amount of time to repair it and you are taking a proactive approach. I used an online kit I got at www.creditrepair101site.com They have properly worded letters that will not be thrown away but that do get results. It got me straightened out. Good luck.
- Check out this site. Referred by Kyle Gilbert
