3 Ways To Repair Your Credit And Improve FICO Scores

Raising your credit score is an important part of improving your overall financial health, but oftentimes it’s difficult to figure out the best way to do so.

Credit is important and can have a major impact on your life. It can affect whether or not you can get a home loan or a car loan, or if you can get a job, or if you can rent a house or apartment. It can affect many parts of your life, and so you want to make sure that you take the right steps to build and maintain a good credit score.

If you need to get any sort of loan in the near future, you first need to know your consumer credit score and how it is calculated. FICO credit scores are a type of credit score that is used by many lenders and banks. FICO credit scores can range anywhere between 300 and 850. A good score is around 700  Any score below 625 is considered poor / bad. Many lenders will require a score of at least 720. The higher your score, the better your chances of getting approved for a loan or credit card.

If you need to raise your credit score, this is not something that’s going to happen overnight. You need to spend some time and work towards improving it. Don’t fall for those quick-fix solutions that promise to improve your scores because they don’t work.

The first thing you need to do is learn to manage your credit and debt. If you’re wondering how to raise your credit score here are three effective ways that can help you.

Check Your Credit Report

The first step to the answer on how to fix my credit begins with figuring out your credit report. You can always request for a copy of this information for free from AnnualCreditReport.com, just keep in mind that they will not give you your credit score.  To get your credit score obtain your credit report from one of the online credit reporting companies.  Many will give you a free month of credit monitoring, but after that, you will be charged monthly.

• Look for inaccurately reporting items.
• Make sure everything reporting on your credit report is yours. Many fathers and sons that share the same name (Sr. & Jr)  will find inaccurately reporting items.
• Look at the date of the item. Is it correct?  A trick some collection agencies play is to put an old charged off account on your credit report with a fresh new date!  Keep in mind the “newer “ the negative item, the bigger the negative impact on your credit score.
• If you are working on building your credit, make sure all your new tradelines are being reported.  If not you may need to contact them and let them know.  Some bad credit credit card lenders charge an additional fee to report on your credit report.  So you may need to sign up for their credit building program and pay the fees before it will show up on your credit report. In case you do find any problems with your report contact the credit bureau and inform them about it so they can look into it.

Setting Up Payment Reminders

This is one of the most effective ways to ensure all your payments are made on time. If you are trying to improve your credit score, then timely payments are something you need to focus on.

Believe it or not, timely payments play a huge role in affecting your credit score and late payment can be a bad thing. Thankfully you can set up automatic payments from your bank account for free,  without having to worry about manually doing it every month. Make use of this service to make all your payments on time.

Lowering Your Debt

This isn’t going to be easy, but it’s not impossible. Managing your expenses plays a huge role in helping you lower your debt. If you’re going to fix your credit, you need to acknowledge that it’s going to take a while.  One quick way to bring your credit score up is to reduce your debt load.

So kill two birds with one stone. Think of the various ways you can cut down on your expenses so you can repay your debt sooner. If you’ve got a credit card, try limiting the usage of your card.

Make it a point to start making better financial decisions. The right investments, payments, and financial management you do today will help you get the credit score you want.

Spend some time on finances each month to figure out the best possible ways to cut down your expenses, pay your bills on time and reduce your debt. There are financial advisors who can assist you in planning your finances.

More ways to raise your credit score

• Know Your FICO  & Vantage Scores
• Never ignore a bill
• Dispute errors with the credit reporting agency that you see the error.  The error may not occur on all the credit bureaus.
• Think about building up savings and paying down debt
• Don’t open more cards than necessary
• Establish an emergency fund
• Get a secured credit card

In conclusion, if you’re interested in keeping your credit score high, it’s best to take care of your credit by making payments on time, keeping balances low, and avoiding opening too many accounts.

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