OK, you have bad credit scores. That really isn’t helping your financial situation any. You are having a hard time getting new credit, you can’t get a credit line increase on the accounts you have, and you feel a constant level of stress because of it.
And then, magically, you see that Internet ad:
“We Can Fix Your Credit Scores Fast!”
Think about it. Several hundred dollars, and you will have a clean, beautiful credit report NOW!
Well, it just doesn’t work that way.
These credit repair firms, and law firms that specialize in credit repair, have a couple of tricks they use. Some of the tricks are legal and ethical. Some aren’t.
One illegal trick they use is to claim identity theft for you and get you a new SSN. If you get a new SSN without a real reason, you may be guilty of fraud.
Another trick they use is to write nasty letters threatening legal action to every one of your creditors. This wipes out both good debt and bad on your reports. And by the way, the collection agencies can spot the letters a mile away, and often ignore them.
The truth, though, is it took you a while to get in this mess, and it will take a bit of time to get out of it. You spent months, or even years, developing a history of late and missed payments, and those records are likely going to stay on your report for a while.
But, you can make a huge difference in your scores. What you have to do is be diligent, and spend a bit of time at it, and you can get the bad things off of your credit reports, keep the good things, open new lines of credit, and improve your scores.
A few things to look at are:
1) Make sure all of the information on your report is correct. If it isn’t correct, fix it.
2) Stop making late payments. Make your recent history as good as possible.
3) Call your creditor and ask for a goodwill correction. Make sure you have a compelling reason for them to work with you.
4) Make sure you use your credit responsibly.
5) Pay down some of your balances.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to fix this. You just have to know what to do, and how to get there. Get started today, get a copy of your report, and you can see a real difference in about a month.
To get a copy of my FREE e-Book ‘The Top Ten Ways You Can Wreck Your Credit’, just click the link. You will be taken to a page where you can get more information about downloading the e-book. This book tells you what you should avoid doing concerning your credit, and what negative impacts can occur if you treat your credit wrong.
One HUGE characterstic of people with a good credit rating is simply having good habits when it comes to paying bills on time. I have an excellent credit rating, even though I have far more debt than I would like, because I am obsessive about making my monthly payments on time.
One of the GREAT things about the internet is that you can now do online banking. What used to take me a half an hour to an hour to pay all my monthly bills through the old fashioned method of check writing, now takes me 5 minutes to pay online. I now pay way aheead of time because I don’t have to psych myself up to invest a bunch of time into writing a bunch of checks, addressing all the envelopes, buying stamps, etc.
…A click of the mouse and a bill is paid.
If late fees are an ongoing problem for you (even though you have the money to pay), changing your procrastination habits by paying online and way ahead of time is a big habit help for your credit rating.