This is a guest post from Shelly T. over at FinancialPlanningTips.net.
Are you stuck with bad credit? You do not have to despair if you have a bad credit score because it is possible to fix your credit and get a better credit rating. I am going to show you how I went about the steps to repair my credit, and if you follow that same advice you can be well on your way to having a better credit score and rating too!
The first thing that you need to do is to actually look at your credit report and see what is in there. You’ve probably seen all of the commercials (and have them stuck in your head) about how you can get a free credit report. Those companies charge you a monthly fee in order to get access to those reports. Every person is allowed to get a truly free credit report every year from each of the 3 credit agencies. Just Google “annual free credit report” and you’ll be able to find it.
When looking in your credit report, make sure that you don’t have any errors in there. If an account is reported twice, if there are any negative things on the account, then they’ll hit you twice as hard. Also, make sure there are new other errors like false mispayments, and call the credit agency and get it fixed right away.
The other thing you need to do is to make sure that you make payments on time. Missed payments will hurt your credit, but once you start making a good history of paying on time your credit will start to go up. You also want to make sure that your total credit used is less than 50% of the total available credit. So if you have $20,000 in available credit, then make sure that your credit isn’t higher than $10,000 and your credit rating will shoot up. If you need extra cash to make the payments and pay down your credit, consider a second job for a few months in order to get yourself in a better situation financially and you’ll be well on your way to improving your credit score.