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You Can Improve Your Credit Without Hiring A Credit Repair Company!
Does thinking about your credit rating give you nightmares? The following advice will help you fix your credit and be proud that you were able to execute these steps without having to hire a credit repair company.
The first thing you should do when trying to improve your credit score is to create a budget andadhere to it. You must make a commitment to making changes on how you spend your money.
Keep in mind, once you have improved your score, it will be easier to obtain business and personal credit! The days are over where the banks only looked at business credit when making a decision for a business loan. They will pull your personal credit too and that can mean getting denied for loan. Even if you have an O.K credit score of around 650, you will find that you will have more options in obtaining financing if you can get your credit score above a 700. Especially if you are looking for unsecured loans.
Contact Your Credit Card Company
Give your credit card company a call and ask them to lower your credit card interest rate. You would be surprised at how easy this is! Most people assume they will get a negative reply. But more often then not, they may give you a permanent interest rate drop, or they may give you a rate good for a certain time period. This will help you to be able to make your payments easier. Once you have contacted all your credit card companies and gotten a lower interest rate, make a list of the credit cards, the interest rate you are paying and the due date. Give priority to your high interest rate cards. Try to pay those off as quickly as possible.
- Do not spend more than you can afford. You will need to change the way of thinking in this regard. In past years, credit was easy and people could stretch themselves too far, and they are now currently paying big payments. Be sure to assess your finances and start cutting out the things that are not necessary.
- Dispute any errors that you identify on your credit report.
- Even if the item itself is correct, finding an error in the amount, date, or something else can cause the entire item to be stricken from your report.
TIP! Negative-but-correct information cannot be removed from your credit report, so be wary of promises from unscrupulous companies who promise to remove it from the credit reporting agencies. This information can stay on your record for about seven years.
Carefully Check Your Credit Card Statements
- In order to get control over your credit, you should consider bill consolidation. This allows you focus on paying off one bill rather than many small ones. Again you don’t need to have a company consolidate your debt. You can make the call yourself. When you call your creditors. Be confident and organized. Let them know that you are trying to gain control over your debt and appreciate their co-operation. If you are DEEP in debt, and considering bankruptcy. Let them know you are trying to avoid having to go bankrupt. They can then contemplate giving you a lower interest rate vs getting nothing thru a bankruptcy filing. If you are really good at negotiations, you can even try to negotiate the debt down to something more manageable.
- If you are able to successfully negotiate a payment schedule for a debt, be sure to get it in writing. Once it is paid off, you need to get a statement verifying this from the creditor and send it to each of the major credit bureaus.
- Check over your credit card bill each month to ensure that there’s no errors. If you notice unwarranted fees or surcharges, you need to call the company right away to avoid them from reporting it to credit reporting agencies.
- Avoid paying your credit card late. This is one of the quickest way to create and maintain a good credit status. Late payments are reported to all credit reports and will greatly decrease your chances of being eligible for a home in the future.
- Try not to use credit cards at all. Pay with cash instead. If you have no choice but to use a credit card, but pay it back as soon as possible.
TIP! Make sure to check all three of your credit reports, and pay extra attention to the negative reports when you are working on repairing bad credit. Errors are not infrequent in credit reports.
Check Your Credit Report Monthly
Its easy to monitor your credit these days. Make sure you sign up with a company that will allow you to pull all 3 credit reports and get the score. Make sure you get the score! You want to be able to monitor your hard work! Think about how gratifying it will be to see your scores improving each month!
