Category: Credit Tips

Your credit score can impact nearly every aspect of your life. It can control whether you can obtain a mortgage, auto loan, or even a job. With this said, it is vital that you understand how to improve your credit score. Federal law requires that everyone have access to one free credit report per year. The reason this law exists is to allow individuals to verify that their credit reports are accurate. If there is inaccurate information listed on your report, by law you have the right to dispute the inaccuracies; the credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate and respond to the disputed items. If the creditor who put the disputed item on your credit report cannot provide proof that you are responsible for the debt, it should be removed. To obtain a copy of your free credit report you can call 877-322-8228, or mail a request to annual credit report request service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.

After you have received a copy of your free report and have reviewed it for any inaccuracies; you will need to dispute them directly with all three credit bureaus. The bureaus include TransUnion, Experian, Equifax. Once you have verified the information on your credit report is accurate, you can then use the following suggestions to help you increase your scores.

• Make Your Payments On-Time – The single most important thing you can do to improve your credit score is to pay your bills on time. If you have had late payments in the past because you simply forgot to make the payment, you may want to set up automatic payment arrangements to pay your bills. This will ensure that your bills are paid on time.

• Credit Card Balances – Credit cards (revolving credit) account for 30% of your score. To maximize your score, you should always keep your revolving card balances below 30% of their available limit.

• Credit Availability – Your scores are calculated based on your unused available credit, how much credit is open, and the length of your credit history. The length of your credit history accounts for 15% of your score. Based on this factor, it would be in your best interest to keep your revolving cards open instead of closing them, because closing old revolving cards would significantly shorten the length of your credit history. To keep a revolving card open, you should use the card at least once every six months. This will keep them from being inactivated.

• Lack of Credit – Unfortunately, if you have very little credit because you pay cash for everything; you probably also have a low credit score. Scores are only determined by the activity reported on your credit report; cash purchases have no bearing on your current score. Therefore, you want to have at least one installment loan and two revolving accounts open at all times. If you are having trouble getting credit, you could apply for a secured card from a local bank or credit union, or you could ask a relative or significant other if you could become an authorized user on one of their revolving cards. Becoming an authorized user will give you an instant payment history. Just make sure that the account you are going to become an authorized user on does not have late payments, or has a balance near the accounts limit.

• Judgments and Collections – If you have a judgment or collection that originated years ago, when you pay or satisfy the derogatory item it may temporarily lower your credit score. Keep this in mind if you plan to apply for credit. You may want to delay paying off old collections right before applying for a mortgage or auto loan.

There are many other ways to help increase a credit score; but keeping your payments on time, managing your debt properly, and having a reasonable amount of available credit are the easiest ways to ensure an acceptable score. Just remember, derogatory credit will immediately lower your scores, whereas making your payments on time and keeping your balances low may take as long as six months to recover from one negative item reported on your credit report.

If you are considering opening a credit restoration business or have recently embarked on the journey of owning your own business repairing other people’s credit, you need to invest in software for credit repair. The idea of owning your own business is an exciting one. You probably envision more free time while earning a lucrative income. In order to do that, you need all the tools available to you to make your dream of becoming a successful business owner a reality. Don’t make the mistake of trying to do it all alone without the help of technology. We live in a modern world that has afforded us the luxury of being able to do many things at once while maintaining organization.

Increase Profits through Increased Productivity

When you invest in software for credit repair, you will be able to increase your profits by easily managing numerous clients at one time. The more clients you can take on, the more money you will make. You need to be able to keep those client accounts organized so you can easily check the status of the credit restoration. You don’t want to waste time and potentially waste money by sifting through stacks of paperwork or trying to organize outdated spreadsheets. A single person can easily manage numerous clients, which will increase your productivity.

Legal Letter Templates

One of the duties of a credit restoration service is to write letters to creditors and credit agencies in an attempt to remove inaccurate information from a client’s credit report. It is a job that requires you to stay within the parameters of the law while expressing the important of removing the information. This is a trick situation that cannot afford mistakes. A good software for credit repair will include letter templates that make writing letters for your clients a breeze. Because there is no one-size-fits-all solution to every credit problem, you need a program that offers you plenty of options that will best suit your client’s unique situation.

Training

Not everybody was born with an aptitude for all things technological. However, you can still be a successful entrepreneur and use a software for credit repair. You will need a little training, which is provided with this software. The training will ensure you know how to use each of the features as well as understand the ins and outs of credit restoration. You need a credit restoration program that is user-friendly and doesn’t have a huge learning curve. You don’t have time to spend hours trying to figure out the various functions of your new software.

Client Portal

As your business grows, the number of clients that are calling and emailing you will increase. This can take up a great deal of your time that could be used to take care of your credit repair duties. One of the best tools you have at your disposal is the client portal which allows clients to check the status of their credit repair. This will cut down on the number of calls you are fielding and then being forced to look up each client and verbally explain what is happening with their credit report. Time is money! You can save time and make more money by using a software for credit repair that takes care of this important part of your business. You won’t have to worry about checking an existing client’s credit report and can focus your time and energy on attracting new clients.

Credit repair is an excellent business opportunity. You too can get in on a business that will never run out of clients. Do yourself a favor and invest in a software for credit repair to make your business successful.

If you are thinking about becoming a credit repair specialist and opening your own business, you need to look into finding good credit repair training. As with any skill you attempt to learn, you need to go through some training to learn the ropes. Finding the right training program is crucial to your overall success. You cannot afford to learn the wrong way. This is your livelihood you are talking about and you deserve to have the best training that will ensure your restoration business gets off to a good start.

The following elements should be included in any training course.

1-The training should cover the laws that govern restoration. You need to know what you can and cannot do to stay within the parameters of the law to protect yourself and your client. It is never okay to skirt the law, which means you need to know, in detail, what those laws are.

2-The dispute process is the key to repairing a credit report. You need to know how to do it effectively. There are several steps that you will need to take on your client’s behalf when disputing an error on a report.

3-The credit repair training should also go into great detail about the anatomy of a dispute letter. This is the first step in disputing an item on a credit report. Creating a letter that is too long or a letter that doesn’t highlight the pertinent details could get it shoved to the side and ignored by the credit reporting agencies. This is a lose-lose situation for you and your client.

4-Part of the process of repairing credit is learning what it take to rebuild credit. You will also need to understand credit scores and what is considered high and low. The training should cover these elements as well as provide you with tips to pass onto your clients about raising their score to a healthy level that will allow them to buy the things they want and need.

5-Because a credit score relies on the credit bureaus, you need to understand how each of the 3 major credit bureaus work and how they get their information. Each bureau will generate a different score for a person. You need to understand the factors that go into the credit score and what you can do to influence the scores on your client’s behalf.

6-Not all credit disputes are going to be solved right away. Because of this, you need training that will take you beyond the basics and explain how to properly get into advanced disputes. You can’t give up, but you need to approach the difficult task professionally and in a way that will get results. You need to know what tools are available to you and how you can successfully dispute an item on a credit report when a bureau is being stubborn.

7-Lastly, the credit repair training course should be easy for you to access and available for you to read, listen and watch. Simply reading a manual isn’t enough. Visual and audio help us to absorb information and retain it better. There is a lot of information and seeing, hearing and reading will ensure it is all covered.

You owe it to yourself to seek out the best credit repair training available. You could earn a comfortable living doing restoration, but in order to do that, you must have the proper training. There are plenty of programs out there, but they do not all include the above mentioned elements. This isn’t an area where you can “make do” or “get by” with inadequate training and information. Make the best decision for your future and choose the right credit repair training that will give you the best shot at being successful.

Many of us never bothering checking our credit. Why? Because we feel like we’ve gone through a few rough patches; maybe defaulted on a loan, have a past eviction, or even stolen a few items from a rent-to-own business and the credit world has flagged us for life. This is why leaning how to check your credit for free will give you an overview of where you stand with your credit and see how bad it really is or isn’t.

First, let me say that you shouldn’t just assume you have bad credit. If you had a problem with not paying your bills, collections, or even judgments against you that does not stay on your credit report forever, so don’t just assume you can’t get credit because of your past.

Many sites will tell you to contact the creditor and pay off your old debt, but what the smart people will tell you is check to see how long ago your bad debt was reported to the credit bureaus. After seven years, many items will fall off of your report and while it is the honorable thing to contact your creditor and pay it off, the smart thing to do, especially if you don’t have the extra cash is to let it disappear into the sunset and be gone forever. Just remember, to never try to get credit from the company again because they will remember and turn you down flat.

One fantastic and free way to check your credit is through the credit monitoring sites like Credit Karma. Now this is not an advertisement for the website, but simply letting you know that by entering your personal information, you can get a full account of who you owe, how old the debt is, and how much they’re claiming you owe.

This site, like many others will offer suggestions based on your credit score, which they will provide to you, what credit you will likely qualify for. The forum is filled with others just like yourself who have had ups and downs with credit, so you will know what to expect before applying.

The truth is, some individuals are just afraid to check. They again, assume their credit is horrible so they result to having no bank account (due to bounced checks), no credit cards (due to defaults), and end up using the local check cashing brick and mortars and prepaid debit cards, both of which you have to spend money to have access to. This is just crazy to spend money to add money to a prepaid card, or to pay 3-5% to cash your paycheck.

If you’re ready to get your credit together and are able to use credit responsibly, now is the time. Once you’ve signed up and reviewed your situation, try the shopping cart trick to see if you qualify for department store credit cards. You can find this information at My Sista Gurl and see how easy it is to get cards like Victoria’s Secret, The Avenue, Gap, and more without a hard inquiry on your credit report.

Kimberly Best, freelance writer, has ghostwritten content in several different niches. If you need content for your web pages or help creating an E-book; let Kimberly express your thoughts through her writing.

Repairing credit can be compared to losing weight, there is no quick-fix! Just as it takes time to get rid of your fat, the same goes for the negative items on your credit report. Any attempt to repair your credit quickly is more likely to backfire, than to produce any positive result. The best thing that you can do in order to rebuild your credit is to be responsible in managing it over a period of six months at the least.

You need to be responsible in managing your credit, but what if there are errors and inaccuracies in your credit report that render it negative? The worst thing about such inaccuracies is that you are at a serious disadvantage, usually through no fault of yours. Unfortunately, a study by U.S Public Interest Research revealed that 70 percent of all credit reports contain serious errors.

Fixing these errors involves a detailed legal process which consists of sending dispute letters to creditors and credit bureaus, sending reminders, studying the documentary evidence provided by creditors and bureaus, and more. Like most people, you might not have the required time and expertise to follow through on all of these processes efficiently. This is where credit repair services can help you out. Now it’s important to understand that it will not be possible to improve your credit score in a few weeks. As previously stated, this is not possible even if the negative items in your credit report are due to error.

Time taken for Credit Repair
Creditors and credit bureaus are required by law to produce original documentation in order to prove the negative items that are present on your credit report. They cannot take more than 30-45 days to do so. However, drafting and sending dispute letters may take some time as well. Some people think that it is possible for any consumer to get his or her credit score corrected without any professional help, which is true but hardly practicable.

Anyone whose credit report contains errors can try to draft their own dispute letters and send them to the concerned parties, but it is time-consuming and it takes a lot of mental effort. Unless you are ready to take this duty as seriously as you take any other professional commitment, do not even try! Hiring a reliable provider for credit repair services, which would be a company that has more than a decade of experience helping thousands of customers with unfairly negative credit reports, can help you correct your credit score without too much fuss.

Credit report repair services are particularly useful when:

— The negative items on your credit report are due to accounting, reporting or any other error committed by creditors, credit bureaus or collection agencies. Genuine errors can be struck off from the reports smoothly when you go through the proper procedures.

— The credit repair service providers are good at identifying errors that cannot be verified. By law, if any item in the report cannot be backed up by documentary evidence, it needs to be removed. This loophole can be used by credit repair companies to improve your score.

— Some lenders are willing to negotiate with credit repair representatives of their consumers. If your lender allows it, this can help you raise your credit score.