Credit repair can be done for free, on your own, if you know how. Most people that have credit issues, do not have the discipline to stick to a very strict schedule of disputations, appeals, and timelines.
Key Points to Credit Repair
Our free credit repair guide does tell you how to repair credit but here are the very basics:
- Pay on time, as agreed
- Do not let accounts close or close them yourself
- Dispute negative items (most negative items)
- Align all information to be exactly correct
- Fix/Correct anything that doesn’t match current address and social security card
- Strategically get new credit
Not Everything Should be Disputed
If you have a 5 year old account with a late payment and the only way to get the late payment off is to remove the entire account, you will actually hurt your score much worse than just leaving the late payment. Knowing what to dispute is critical. Do not simply dispute everything unless you understand the results of getting that item removed.
Stick to Very Strict Scheduled
30 days? 45 days? 90 days? What is the actual time that bureaus and lenders have to reply to your documentation requests. Though it changes infrequently, if you do not stick to the current guidelines, and follow up when it’s time, you are wasting your efforts.
Hire it Out
There are a few great companies that can help with fixing your credit. Get our guide, decide if you want to do it yourself (I wouldn’t recommend it), and if you have decided that it’s better for a professional company to fix your credit use one of the best: LexingtonLaw.com They have a program that is very efficient and will quickly fix your credit. It is common for even judgements to be removed.
But beware! You do not need to hire these companies indefinitely. Get the major things fixed and then you take over. You can fix mispellings on your name, incorrect addresses, work, phone numbers, etc. Let them do the hard stuff, and you do the easy stuff, then cancel their service. 3-6 months is a about what it takes to really take the majority of the negative things off and raise your score. Lexingtonlaw.com is the best service I’ve found, and who I recommend if you aren’t doing it yourself.