How to Fix Your Credit Score Fast

Fix credit fast.

If you plan to acquire a home loan or any type of financing in the very near future, boosting your credit score can help you secure funds and complete your purchase. There are numerous ways to go about fixing your credit score fast. Often, it's a matter of changing your habits and being serious when it comes to credit. Lenders and credit card companies prefer people who can manage credit. Maintaining a good rating proves that you're worthy of financing.

Instructions

1. Check to ensure that your credit card issuer reports to the bureaus. Some lenders and credit card companies do not regularly report to the credit bureaus, which means your report could be missing months or years of positive payments. Contact your creditors to see if they report, and if they don't, request regular updates to quickly raise your score.

2. Negotiate removal of a negative item. Call the customer service number for your credit card company and ask the company to forgive or remove one-time late payments from your report.

3. Don't ignore collection accounts. Negative remarks like collection accounts stay on your report for seven years, and during this time, these remarks can bring down your score. Agree to pay off the account, and then politely ask the reporting creditor to lift the remark from your report to quickly fix your credit.

4. Become debt-free. Paying off your credit card balances completely is one way to quickly raise your credit score.

5. Promptly challenge your credit report information. Some creditors are slow to update credit reports, and some accidentally report wrong information. Order your credit history once or twice a year, and contact your creditors if your report contains inaccurate information.

6. Improve payment record. Add points to your score each billing cycle with on-time payments.

References

• FTC: Credit Repair
• MSN Money: Fix Credit in 72 Hours
• Federal Reserve: 5 Tips for Improving Credit