HELP TO REPAIR YOUR CREDIT

The search for credit repair help can be a little scary at times. There are so many factors that come together to lower your score that it can be confusing as well. Your exact situation will always be just a little different from anyone else’s; you need to evaluate it carefully. Once you’re able to see exactly what’s wrong, you can start researching how to fix it.

Many services offer to help consumers: credit repair services, counseling services, debt consolidation, and even friends and family. There are so many it’s hard to pick the right one: who’s right for you? This depends on your exact situation as well. Some of these offered services can help and hurt at the same time: credit counseling often lowers debt but also harms your actual credit score.

Keeping your used-credit to under 30% of your available credit is a major part of a high score. For a lucky few, all they need to do to raise that score is to pay their debt down. The best way to pay debt down is to create a budget, live well below your income, and consider taking on a second job. Do your best to avoid paying high interest fees for late payments on your credit accounts. Transferring high-interest amounts to low-interest accounts is another way to pay them off faster.

If your problem is negative items on credit report, you may need to resort to credit repair. That repair happens through disputes filed with the credit bureaus in an effort to remove the negative items. Once you send a dispute form to the bureau, it has 30 to 45 days to find verification of the information. It’s also possible to dispute public records: judgments, foreclosures, tax liens, repossessions and bankruptcies are all fair game.

In addition to the dispute letter to the credit bureau, you should also send a debt validation letter directly to the creditors of any debt on your record. This request must be in writing, and they have 30 days to reply. If they fail to reply, or can’t come up with accurate documentation showing your debt, law requires them to delete the account from your credit report.

If the creditor is able to validate the debt, and if the bureau doesn’t remove it from your report for lack of verification, you don’t have many options left. One of them is to contact the creditor directly and negotiate with them. Some creditors may be willing to delete the account from your report if you’re willing to pay the account in full or in part.

A smart consumer always knows the status of his or her credit score before trying for a new credit account. If you apply for an account, but you know you have little chance of approval, you’re harming your score even more. It’s a good idea to sign up for a credit monitoring service, so you can stay aware at all times of your score and report.

by Chane Steiner