Regardless of your record or history, there are a number of quick & easy steps you can take towards credit repair. It’s never too late, and costs nothing, yet the results can be huge!
To start, you’ll need to get a copy of your credit reports and actually go through them. There are three separate credit reporting bureaus and each one will have a slightly different report.
The law entitles consumers to a free copy of the credit report, one from each of the three agencies: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. You are able to get one from each bureau every year.
The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has set up a website where you can order them: annualcreditreport.com. Be careful of any other website that claims to offer you free reports – this is the “official” site, and any others have strings attached.
You’ll start your credit repair efforts as soon as you get your reports. To begin with, you want to read each report line by line.
These reports will either include a “dispute” form, or give you a web address to get them. This is the key where you will begin to fix your credit.
For every entry that is incorrect, inaccurate, or outdated, you will be filing a dispute. Provide the correct information, or why it is incorrect, such as a debt that has been paid but not removed.
Each credit reporting agency has up to 30 days to either verify the information, or they must remove it by law. Even if the information is accurate, if they don’t verify it in time, it gets removed.
By taking this simple step, you will find some of those negative entries will come off your credit report, and as such no longer contribute to a low credit score. In some cases, this can boost your score by hundreds of points!