It’s not until you’re dealing with a bad credit score that you realize how much it can affect your everyday life. Here are some tips to help you start repairing your credit.
GET A COPY OF CREDIT REPORT
You can request a copy of your credit report from each of the three bureaus once a year. On this report, you will find a detailed account of your payment history, credit utilization, credit history length, types of credit, and all credit inquiries. Check this for any errors that may be affecting your overall credit score. If you find an error, you can dispute this online, by phone, or by mail. The more information you have to dispute the information, the better.
FIND THE ISSUE
Once you ensure your credit report is accurate, check what is the cause of your low score. Have you had a series of late payments? Was there a time when you were a little too reliant on credit that affected your utilization? Did you open too many lines of credit at one time? Finding what’s causing the issue will make it much easier to plan to fix it.
LATE AND MISSED PAYMENTS
The most weighted factor in a credit score is your payment history. This means that all those late or missed payments can stack up very quickly. Starting with those late payments and creating automatic so you don’t miss payments in the future can help start the process of rebuilding your score.
NO NEW CREDIT
When trying to repair your credit, put a pause on applying for new lines of credit, this includes loans or cards, as this may lower your score. A hard inquiry takes place on your credit when you apply for these, which automatically drops your score a couple of points.
BE PATIENT
While it’s super easy for a credit score to drop (one late payment) it is equally as difficult to bring it back up again. Depending on much you want to raise your score, it can take months to years to get it to where you need to be.
