Credit Repair

Credit Repair for Everyone
Everyone wants their credit score to be as high as possible. Not everyone is a candidate for credit repair, but most people can utilize these score raising techniques to one degree or another. For some it is a matter of recovering after a period of financial difficulty, others may only need a little tune-up. Here are the best ways to improve your credit scores, and keep them up!
Positive and Negative Issues
There are two areas that must be addressed as part of any credit repair effort, the positive and the negative. Without positive credit your scores will go nowhere regardless of any progress you make removing erroneous derogatory information. And unless you clean up the negative errors that are weighing down your scores you will be handicapped without the presence of positive credit on your report.
Open and Active Accounts
Building positive data on your report for credit repair purposes does not have to be difficult. Secured credit cards are the perfect way to develop positive history even if your current scores make it impossible for you to qualify for regular unsecured accounts. If your scores are not too bad you may be able to obtain regular cards. Either way, make sure that you have open active accounts showing on your report.
Managing Open Accounts
Before we discuss credit repair techniques for dealing with the negative issues on your report it is important to touch on the ways to manage your open active accounts. It is common sense that you must make your payments on time; a late payment can be a terrible setback. But if you really want the best scores it is critical that you maintain your balances properly.
Using Your Balances Properly
High revolving balances will hurt your credit scores. Conversely, low balances will help. The extent to which this factor can impact your results is very dramatic. There are certain percentage breakpoints that you can focus on: 20, 40, 60, and 80 percent limit usage. If you run a balance up over 80 percent your scores could fall by 100 points. The best credit repair results will come from bringing your balances under the 20 percent mark.
Finding the Errors Can Be Hard
The negative information on your report presents a different set of challenges. Most people these days are aware of the prevalence of reporting errors. What most people are not cognizant of is how subtle some of these issues can be. It is not always easy to find errors. It is not just a matter of looking for late payments you do not recognize. Many errors are hard-to-spot legal violations by collectors and other participants in the system.