Perk Up Your Credit Worthiness With Credit Repair |
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More than ever, the terms
Credit Repair and credit rehabilitation have become ubiquitous in American financial circles today. It seems a thorough knowledge of credit usage and credit repair are necessary in today's society, but few people reach adulthood having been trained in such important skills. There are three major companies in the U.S. that attempt to keep track of American consumers' records of spending and credit use: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. Each scores your record of payments to your various creditors based on punctuality, amounts and regularity. If the information they each have is the same, your credit score with each should be very close to the same also. There are also other companies that collect such information, but they are less regularly used in decisions about granting employment, insurance or credit and therefore are not important in a credit repair effort. Do you need to look at credit repair as a method to improve your financial outlook? Look at your record of administering your finances. Check with the big three reporting agencies to see if their records match yours. You may need to file a dispute claim with the appropriate agency or agencies to reconcile the two. They are bound by federal law to either verify any disputed negative information on your record within a certain amount of time, or remove it. If the information is verified correct you can then go to the creditor in question to resolve the issue. You might arrange a payment plan or have them write the credit reporting agency to correct any confusion. What about the question of how to get a credit report in the first place? A recent amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act provides that you can (by the end of 2005) request a free copy of their credit report from any credit reporting agency once every 12 months. Also, you are entitled to a copy of your credit report if you are denied credit, insurance or employment within the past 60 days or if you are unemployed and plan to seek employment within 60 days, or have been evicted. You are also entitled to a free report if you are on welfare, or if you have information that your report is inaccurate due to fraud. If you are requesting a report due to denial of credit, insurance or employment, the company that denied you must provide you with the contact information for the agency that provided the credit report. This can jumpstart your credit repair efforts without costing you any money. It will, however, cost you in time and effort. For this reason, many Americans look to credit repair firms for help. These firms can assist in disputes, help with payment plans, and provide advice on how to improve your credit profile. Be careful that you ensure the credit repair agency you engage is indeed legitimate and reputable. Check with your state's Consumer Protection Bureau or Better Business Bureau. Once you have reconciled your credit report and are well along with your credit repair program, you must maintain due diligence over your credit reports and payment records to ensure the information that goes into your credit reports is positive and correct. Any negative information can then be buried by the good information, providing you with a progressively more positive profile. |
