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Thinking of "Cleaning Up" Your Credit? Think Again
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"Credit Repair" as advertised on radio, TV, and the Internet tends to be, at best,
a waste of money and, at worst, a scam that would simply defraud you or (perhaps worse)
involve you in fraud yourself. Even if a credit repair company is legitimate, there's
nothing they can legally do that you can't do yourself at no cost. This is because
there really is no legal way to "repair" bad credit if the history thereof is
accurate--only time can do that. Check out this article on credit repair.
The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act guarantees your right to dispute inaccurate
information in your credit report free of charge, so if any of the problems
you've had are due to inaccurate information, you can file a dispute with one of the
nation's major credit bureaus to have it corrected or removed. We offer detailed
instructions for how to do this.
If the information is accurate, however, you'll need to focus on building better
credit for the future rather than trying to have it removed from your report.
Remember that most lenders are primarily interested in your payment patterns for just
the past two years, so if you begin now to pay every bill on time it will have a
positive impact on your credit relatively quickly. You can read additional tips on
building good credit.
Only time and establishing a positive credit history can "clean up" your credit.
One of the best first steps to getting your credit back on track is seeing what is
on your credit report. This way, you can take steps to correct any inaccurate
information that may be contained on your report and, at the same time, assess your
current credit debt. For information on how to order your report, you can visit the
Reports and Services area of our website.
The next step might be to contact old accounts that carry outstanding debt and arrange
payment plans. For more about debt management, you can read our article "Digging
Out of Debt is the Beginning of Building Your Savings".
As you begin to manage your debt successfully, you will also want to work on
rebuilding your credit. For information that may help you in this process,
you can go to the Credit Basics area.
Copyright © 2000, CreditMatters.com
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