Best Way To Raise My Bad Credit Score

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The absolute best way to raise your credit score starts with getting copies of your credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. By law, you can get free copies once a year from each of these via the website AnnualCreditReport.com. It’s a simple site that asks a few questions and allows you to either print the results via online reports, or telephone or mail options if you’re leery of sending that information over the Internet. When you get your reports, you’ll need to do a little research on what the reports mean. Then, you can set about raising your bad credit score to good.

The first step involves you going over the report and finding anything that’s just plain wrong. You might have made payments that are not showing, or there may actually be transactions that you never made or authorized. In each case, you’ll need to contact the creditor or collection agency, either online or by mail, and explain what the charge is and why it is incorrect. Credit Elves can offer you sample letters ...
... and help you with your own wording. You wait for a response, and it either comes off the report, or you go to the next dispute step, or you pay what you owe to get it off the record.

From the credit reports, figure out if your debt ratio is bad. This is when you owe more than you can ever repay in a reasonable time, or you have too much credit available to you already, when just a little will do. Creditors shy away from issuing new credit to someone who’s already obviously overextended, so a good step to raising your bad credit score is to request that your credit limits be lowered to more manageable levels.

Another obvious way to clear up your credit is to pay off what you owe. What you might not know however, is that you should negotiate with your creditors before you take what they say you owe at face value. They might have charged you exorbitant interest rates or strange fees. Ask that they justify those before you agree to pay. They may not work with you, but then again, they might. It’s worth at least asking before you start paying down the debts.

Make sure everything that’s on your credit report is supposed to be there, legally. There may be accounts and bills, collections or charge-offs that are older than the legal statute of limitations, in which case, they should not even be listed. Dispute those immediately and your credit score could rise dramatically, as with each of the steps listed above.

In summary, the best way to raise your bad credit score is to get the most current copy of your credit reports, be diligent in disputing erroneous information, be assertive with your creditors, or have intermediaries argue on your behalf to bring your total debt owed down, and pay off what you owe as soon as you can.