How to Improve Your Bad Credit

Your credit score is the backbone of your financial life. Credit allows you to buy a home, apply for telephone service, get credit cards and sometimes get a job. A poor credit score not only raises your interest rates on payments, it can also prevent you from borrowing money in the first place. Bad credit can happen to good people. If you find yourself in a less than desirable credit score bracket, there are some things you can do to raise your bad credit.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Shred any and all credit card applications that come your way. The mail is littered with junk mail aimed to get your business. Even if you could receive a lower interest rate on a new credit card, do not apply. Opening new accounts will only make you appear riskier and lower your score further.

2. Pay your bills on time. When it comes to credit, perhaps the most important element is timely loan payment. This could mean your credit cards, car loan, personal loan or mortgage. If you have trouble paying on time, contact your lender and explain the problem.

3. Cut up all but one of your existing credit cards. In a perfect world you would destroy all credit cards. This is, however, the real world. Emergencies occur and there may be a time when you need to use credit to make a necessary purchase.

4. Maintain an account with all your destroyed credit card providers. Closing credit card accounts may actually be a red flag on credit reports. As long as you have destroyed your card, there is no harm in keeping accounts open.

5. Pull your credit report each year and check for errors. You would be surprised at how many errors there are on credit reports. The errors could be costing you money in interest and points on your credit score.

Tips & Warnings

• Aim for a credit score above 650, and ideally above 700.
• There are 3 different credit bureus. Make sure to pull your credit score from each.
• Don't get discouraged if your credit score is the same after one month. It can take months to improve bad credit.

Resources

• CNN Money
• Money Central

Who Can Help Sponsored

• How strong is your score?  Did you know checking your own credit won’t affect your score? Click here to see yours in two easy steps from Experian.
• A Bad Credit Score is 598 or Below. Checking your own Credit Report won't affect your score! See instantly for $0 by Experian® www.FreeCreditReport.com

[lawrencebussani]

on 12/19/2009 Great article 5 start for that information

I know a site that offer free credit report.They also offer credit monitoring, bad credit help, credit fraud alerts.I thought to share it here.

http://www.CreditReportFrees.Info