How to Remove Bad Credit from Your Credit Report
Author: Chane Steiner
Category: Finance
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Most people don't even realize that it's possible to remove bad credit from your credit report. Most people believe that once they are plagued with bad credit, they simply must go through life paying high interest rates or not being approved for loans at all. They've been told that it takes anywhere from 7 to 10 years for the negative items on their credit report to come off. They rarely even try to get new positive items reporting.
Hopefully one day "most people" will realize that it is possible to do something about their bad credit. Here's how you can get started today:
1. Obtain your credit reports. You can do it for free at AnnualCreditReport.com.
2. Analyze your reports and locate the negative items.
3. Dispute the negative items with the credit bureaus. Anything that can not be verified by the creditor within 30 days must be removed from your credit report.
4. Disputed items will either be removed, corrected or remain.
5. Request validation with creditors and collection companies on the accounts that remain.
6. If the creditors validate the accounts, you can choose to negotiate with creditors and collection companies.
7. After negotiating and making payment, creditors delete the negative accounts or change them to a positive rating.
8. Apply for new credit. Rebuild your credit by adding new positive accounts to your report.
9. Make your payments on time and keep your balances below 40% of your limits.
10. Enjoy good credit and remember to be responsible.
Another thing you should do is pay off the most recent past due accounts. Be careful making payments on accounts that are more than a few years old as paying them can bring your scores down even further because it makes the negative account current. You will also want to try to get an agreement with the creditor to update it to "paid as agreed" or remove the account BEFORE you pay it. It's much harder to get it updated or removed after you pay it because you don't have much leverage.
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Keywords: credit repair, credit report repair, increase credit scores, raise your credit scores, remove bad credit
View Count: 62
Date Submitted: 3/3/2008
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