December 21, 2008
You Can Begin Your Own Credit Repair Today – Here’s How!
Whatever your background or record, you can take some simple and quick steps to begin your own credit repair. It costs nothing and you can begin right away – but the results can be tremendous!
The first step is to get copies of your credit report, read them, and understand them. There are three credit reporting agencies, and there can be differences in your file between them.
The law now provides consumers the right to one free credit report from each of the bureaus, Experian, TransUnion, and Equfax. You are entitled to one from each company every year.
The Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has set up a website where you can order them: annualcreditreport.com. Be careful of any other website that claims to offer you free reports – this is the “official” site, and any others have strings 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.
Along with the report, you will get a “dispute” form – or an address where you can get it. This is where your initial credit repair efforts will focus.
Make a note of every outdated, inaccurate, or incorrect entry – you will be disputing these. Fill out a dispute form and provide corrected information, or why it is inaccurate, such as debts that have already been paid but are still listed.
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.
With just this simple step, some of these negative entries will be removed from your credit report. They will no longer contribute to a low credit score, and your score will immediately go up – sometimes by hundreds of points!
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