Seven Steps to Disputing Bad Credit – A Do It Yourself Job

If you have less than stellar credit, one option is to try and repair your credit report yourself. Having a good credit score is important for almost any major activity in life, including obtaining a mortgage, car loan, and even car insurance. In addition, more and more employers are beginning to review a candidate’s credit score and credit history as a factor in making their hiring determination.

If you have poor credit, not only are your lending options minimized, but your ability to obtain a job or sign a good lease are also jeopardized. If you feel you can dispute some items of bad credit on your report, you can hire a credit repair service, or you can try and do it yourself.

7 Do It Yourself Steps To Bad Credit Repair

There are many avenues for you to take to raise your credit score – disputing items on your report is one suggestion. If you feel up to the task, you can do this yourself:

• Step 1: Order your credit reports – Be sure to get a copy from all three reporting agencies. You are entitled to one free credit report per agency annually in order to monitor activity and any discrepancies.
• Step 2: Review personal information – It is important to ensure that all of your personal information is correct. This helps to detect potential instances of identity theft, which will commonly result in strange addresses that do not belong to you. Personal information is less important to correct if it is simply a misspelling of your name or a listing of your old employer, instead of a current one.
• Step 3: Review credit information – Make a determination of any inaccurate information, as well as anything that is considered out-of-date. Major concerns are paid financial accounts that still show your debt, declarations of “late” payments when you paid on time, or any financial accounts that do not belong to you. In addition, you should check to make sure credit limits on your credit cards are being reported correctly.
• Step 4: Make a list of questionable items – You need to ensure that you dispute each and every one error separately. An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure – getting your information in order before disputing it is key.
• Step 5: Dispute items with the credit bureaus – All of the errors and discrepancies need to be disputed one at a time, and you should ensure that the wording is correct. The more details you can provide, such as the date you paid off the loan, the better your results will be. In addition to submitting the dispute online, you may want to also write physical dispute letters requesting the bureaus to fix the incorrect information.
• Step 6: Keep good records – Make copies of everything for your records, as well as log the time and confirmation number for online dispute submissions. If you called any of the agencies, you should also note in a call log the person’s name and the date that you talked to them.
• Step 7: Follow up with the agencies – If you have not heard from the agencies in 30 days, call them back and check on the status of their investigation. They have a legal obligation to investigate your dispute, and you have the right to find out what they are doing to correct things.

Hiring a credit repair specialist

If you do not have the time, patience or detail-oriented ability to repair your credit yourself, then you can always hire a credit repair agency to help. Reputable agencies will have attorneys and legal specialists on staff. You still must do Step 1 to 4 above yourself, or have them help you. You then submit your questionable items to the agency, who will then dispute the items in your name. Instead of wondering if you did everything correctly, you will have a professional working with you.

Other steps you can take to repair your credit

While you are repairing your report, there are several actions you can take to not only clean up your credit, but raise your overall credit score:

• Pay the balances down on credit cards. While it is financially smart to pay off the ones with the highest rate, when repairing credit, it is better to concentrate on paying down the credit cards that are close to the maximum limit.
• Use your credit cards lightly. You can typically increase your credit score by keeping the charges below 30% or less of the card’s limit.
• Do not close the old cards, simply dust them off and use the cards every few months. The older and established the history is, the better for your score.
• Do not make late payments. If you have a good score, it can drop by approximately 100 points if you have late payments. Bad credit scores are not as extremely affected by late payments, but credit ratings still suffer from the delays.
• Decrease the amount of collections you owe by paying a little each month until the it is fully paid. Make sure that the creditor updates the credit file.

Understanding how to repair bad credit is within your grasp – and if you are committed to beginning the road to a better credit rating, it is easy to implement strategies to repair your credit. However, if you lack time or commitment to disputing questional bad credit, there is always the option of hiring the services of a credit repair agency to improve your credit score for you.

Related Articles:

• Credit Repair – The Process, and How to Detect Scammers
• Credit Report Errors? Or Deliberate Misreporting?
• How to read a credit report to improve your score
• Watching Your Credit by Ordering Your Credit Reports
• Repair Your Credit