How To Repair Your Bad Credit Report
Now that you need a much higher credit score than 720 to get the best credit card rates, you need to start working on repairing a bad credit report. Lenders are getting stricter because they were too lax on what documents they needed and they got burned. Now they are making sure they do not get burned again and making it much harder for people to qualify for the best loan rates. In this article, you will learn some steps you can take to repair a bad credit report and increase your fico credit score.
Repair Bad Credit Report – There Are No Credit Repair Secrets
The first thing you need to do is get a copy of your credit report. You can do so at www.annualcreditreport.com, and you can purchase your credit scores if you would like to take a peek at them. But the info in your credit report is what makes your score go up or down.Get your free credit report and check to make sure everything in there should be there. You cannot delete accurate negative items, you just have to wait those out.You can put in a dispute and get the incorrect information deleted. So do a credit report dispute to get those items corrected and repair bad credit.
If you make late payments every few months or even just once or twice a year, your score will go down. You need to setup automatic payments so you can have all your bills paid on time. You won’t have any late fees this way either.
Next you are going to want to decrease your credit utilization ratio. This is how much of your available credit you are using. You can increase your credit limits or decrease what you owe. Both ways can help you.This one tip may be a challenge because many banks are hesitant to increase credit lines.
Another way to boost your credit score and improve your credit rating is to not close old accounts. Your credit history is a big portion of what makes up your score so if you close all your 5, 7 and 10 year old accounts, you erase this part of your past and it lowers your score. So follow these well known steps and you can start repairing your bad credit report and getting better rates on your loans and credit cards.