Credit repair is something anyone can work on, regardless of your current financial situation. Here are some quick and easy steps you can begin with right away.

The first step toward credit repair is finding out where you are at right now. This means getting copies of your credit reports, reading them, and understanding them.

You are entitled to a free credit report from each one of the credit reporting agencies, each year. Surprisingly, the information often varies from one agency report to another.

The Federal trade commission or FTC has set up a website specifically for consumers to get their free credit reports. Simply go to annualcreditreport.com. Since you are only entitled to one free report each year from each of the credit reporting agencies, it may be wise to get one at a time and then read it over thoroughly.

While these credit reports do show your credit and debt history, they do NOT show you your credit score. The credit bureaus will gladly sell you an additional report that shows
your actual credit score, but they are not required to do so for free. If you want to see what your credit score is, you will be able to purchase that report when you order your free credit report.

Once you have received one of these reports, you can begin working on your own credit repair. The first step is to read through all of the entries in the report. You want to look for any mistakes or information that has not been updated. This includes debts that you may have already paid off that are reflected in the report.

Credit repair largely involves removing old, inaccurate, erroneous information from your report. You will need to make note of every entry that isn't accurate or up-to-date. Read the report carefully, it's not uncommon to have information on it that may be from another person with the same name as you!

In order to correct the record, either by removing inaccuracies or updating entries, you'll need to file a dispute with the reporting agency. Along with the report, you will find a dispute form or an address where you can get the form to file these disputes.

By law, the credit reporting agency has 30 days to verify each of your disputes. If they cannot verify the accuracy of the entry, or cannot do it within the 30 days allowed, they must remove that item from your report. Often, many of these negative entries are removed simply because they were responded to quickly enough, or the agency could not verify the information.

If you have taken these first steps, you are well on your way toward credit repair. In fact, this step alone may clear the way towards a much higher credit score.

Bill Jackson
09-23-2008

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