If you’ve seen advertisements that say you can repair your own credit, be aware that the statement is only true to a point, and it’s often not as simple as it’s made out to sound, but some of it can be done. There are things that you can do to start improving your credit rating, and those things will make it more acceptable to a lender at a later date when you decide that you want to borrow money and your credit has to be checked. The first step, therefore, is to know what’s on your credit report and why it’s there, because you can’t work at improving your credit if you don’t even know what it looks like right now.
Step two is to take a careful look at all three of your credit reports – you should have one from Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian – and see if they match up or if there are some different things on some of them that are not on the others. A discrepancy could mean that some of your credit information was incorrectly reported or that some of the information on your report isn’t even yours, and that could be hurting your credit score. Contacting the credit bureaus and asking that these things be removed is what you should do, and they have to remove the items if they cannot absolutely prove that they are yours, after which they’ll send you a new credit report so you can see that the correction has been made.
In step three, you’ll want to count up the open, active accounts that you currently have and see that you have at least three, since that’s how many you need to have a good credit score. It’s hard to tell how responsible you are with your credit if you only have one or two open accounts, and if you have three to five it’s much easier to see what you’ve been doing with your credit, especially if those accounts are varied (like vehicle loans or a mortgage) and not all credit cards. You can get more accounts if you don’t have enough, but you’ll have to be careful how you do this, since just running out and applying for more credit cards can actually really hurt your credit score.
Step four is a crucial one if you know someone who has good credit and who trusts you, because it’s not a step that you can do on your own. What you want to do here is get that trusted person to add you as an authorized user on their credit cards without actually giving you the card to use – that way you won’t be spending or adding up debt, but you will be getting the benefit of their good credit added to your credit report. Only do this with a person who has had the card for at least two years and who has not been late with a payment, though, because their credit problems with that card would also attach to your report, as well.
In step five, you have to start paying down your debt, because having high balances on things will really hurt you in the long run – it makes you look irresponsible. Your credit card debt, for example, should be no more than 30% of the amount that you’re actually allowed to borrow on your credit cards, but even if you can’t get them to that point work to get them down below 50% of the available credit. Having balances that are low and that stay low means that your lenders will see that you’re taking good care of the credit you’ve been offered, so you’ll have a better chance of getting even more credit.
Step six is to let those paid-off, open credit card accounts stay open, and don’t close them out just because you’ve paid them off. When you close out accounts they drop off of your credit report after seven years, so you’ll stop getting ‘good credit’ points for them, and you don’t want to do that. Some accounts like car loans and mortgages do that automatically, but credit cards will stay open as long as you don’t close them and you use them occasionally, so be sure to keep your credit strong by doing that.
Step seven is the easiest one: maintain what you’ve done and are doing to keep your credit score high by making sure things get paid on time. Don’t start adding up a bunch of new debt once you’ve gotten rid of the old debt, and you’ll soon see that your credit score will stay high, allowing you to get the credit that you need when you need it. If you only get and use credit when you need it, and you don’t overextend yourself, you’ll have a much better chance of keeping a great credit score for years to come and being able to buy what you need without worrying that you won’t qualify for any kind of low-interest credit.