Regardless of your track record or credit history, you can take some simple steps and do your own credit repair. You can begin right away, and it won’t cost you anything – but the improvement can be gigantic!
To start, you’ll need to get a copy of your credit reports and actually go through them. There are three separate credit reporting bureaus and each one will have a slightly different report.
By law, consumers are entitled to one free credit report from each of the these agencies, TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. You can get one from each agency, each year.
There is a website set up by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) specifically for this purpose: annualcreditreport.com. Be leery of any other sites claiming free credit reports – there will be strings & fees attached.
As soon as you receive your reports, you can begin the process of credit repair. You will start by going through these files line by line.
These reports will either include a “dispute” form, or give you a web address to get them. This is the key where you will begin to fix your credit.
For every entry that is incorrect, inaccurate, or outdated, you will be filing a dispute. Provide the correct information, or why it is incorrect, such as a debt that has been paid but not removed.
By law, the credit reporting agencies have 30 days to verify the information being disputed. If they cannot verify it, or don’t do so within the allotted 30 days, those entries must be removed from your credit report.
By taking this simple step, you will find some of those negative entries will come off your credit report, and as such no longer contribute to a low credit score. In some cases, this can boost your score by hundreds of points!