subject: Credit Repair Plans - Professional Guidance [print this page] While good credit is a vital necessity in modern society, it is not a right. Good credit is a privilege earned through smart financial behavior. Those who have made bad financial choices in the past need not be penalized forever, though. There are many simple steps they can take to repair their personal credit.
Always keep your bank accounts, your tax payments and your utility payments in order and timely. The way in which you manage these necessities reflects strongly on your credit rating. Falling behind on your obligations and having overdrafts at the bank negatively impacts your daily life and makes it more difficult to get credit.
Paying your monthly bills in a timely fashion is a basic step towards fixing your credit problems. Letting bills go unpaid exposes you to late fees, penalties and can hurt your credit. If you lack the funds to pay all your monthly bills, contact the companies you owe and explain the situation. Offer to pay what you can. Paying some is much better than not paying at all.
When you are writing a letter to a credit bureau about an error, keep the letter simple and address only one problem. When you report several mistakes in one letter, the credit bureau may not address them all, and you will risk having some problems fall through the cracks. Keeping the errors separate will help you in keeping track of the resolutions.
If you believe there is an error on your credit report, be sure to submit a specific dispute with the proper bureau. Along with a letter describing the error, submit the incorrect report and highlight the disputed information. The bureau must start processing your dispute within a month of your submission. If a negative error is resolved, your credit score will improve.
It is important to not be lazy or hold off repairing your credit even if you do not have a need for loans in the near future. Bad credit can affect other areas of your life also. For example, many employers will look at credit as one way to measure the responsibility of a potential employee. Insurance companies also use credit as a factor in determining premiums because of a correlation between poor credit and increased claims.
If your credit has been harmed by an error on your credit report, it is important that you report the error quickly. You should immediately report the error to the relevant credit bureau and any organizations that you received your credit information from. When reporting the error, be sure to include documentation that supports your claim, and explain the error in detail. Keep in mind that the law protects you by requiring these organizations to correct errors when they happen.
Save up for expensive items that you wish to purchase, and then pay for them with cash. This may take some getting used to, but you will develope a knack for it. Then you will not only see your credit score improve, but you will also sleep better at night. Paying cash for larger purchases will keep you from having to pay all that expensive interest too.
Try to settle debts. Often times debt collectors would rather settle a debt with you than to have it go unpaid. Start off haggling with the debt collector, see if they will take 30 percent of what is owed and just go up from there. You may also get them to remove negative information as well, by trying to settle.
One of the best self-help tips for credit repair is to become pro-active as soon as you realize that your money is just not going to spread far enough to cover all of your monthly bills. You should immediately contact creditors at the first sign that you are not going to be able to make ends meet. Explain your situation and see if you can structure a modified payment plan which reduces your payments to ones that you can pay. This will cause less damage to your credit than having your account turned over to a debt collector.
When working on credit repair be sure to get any agreements made between you and creditors in writing. Nothing is a guarantee unless you have it writing. An employee of your creditor may not actually have the authority to make a deal with you and if it is not in writing the creditor has no obligation to keep their word.
As was discussed in the opening of this article, fixing correctable mistakes on your credit report is rather simple if you understand how to go about it. Oftentimes, people are unaware of the errors in their credit report when they get turned down for loans. Apply the advice from this article and you'll see just how easy you can fix the mistakes on your credit report.
