IMPROVING YOUR CREDIT
Developing A Credit Rebuilding Strategy
by: T.B. Collins
Everywhere you look credit seems to be an essential part
of our daily lives, it is used if we want to buy a house
or rent an apartment, buy a new car, or even go shopping
for large item merchandise. With credit being such an
important factor in our lives, the number of consumers
that have poor to bad credit is astounding, but these
people can rebuild their credit to a good or excellent
status if they develop a strategy to improve their credit.
Developing a credit rebuilding strategy is not as complicated
as it may seem, but it can be time consuming and the process
can be frustrating. Dealing with consumer reporting agencies,
the agencies responsible for maintaining the credit files
of consumers, requires that you know the laws that govern
these agencies and how to use them to your benefit. The
Federal Trade Commission has developed a set of laws that
protects the consumer, and the most important of these
laws is the Fair Credit Reporting Act, this law gives
the consumer the right to make sure their credit report
is accurate and up-to-date.
Before any strategy can be developed, a firm understanding
of what tools are available to assist in the implementation
of the developed strategy is essential, and the most important
of these tools is the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Before
you can start developing a strategy you have to know what
the F.C.R.A. entitles the consumer to do about their credit
report, and what is covered under this act:
You have the right to receive a copy of your credit report.
The copy of your report must contain all of the information
in your file at the time of your request.
You have the right to a free copy of your credit report
when your application is denied because of information
supplied by a consumer reporting agency. Your request
must be made within 60 days of receiving your denial notice.
If you contest the completeness or accuracy of information
in your report, you should file a dispute with the consumer
reporting agency, and with the company that furnished
the information to the consumer reporting agency. Both
the consumer reporting agency, and the furnisher of information
are legally obligated to reinvestigate your dispute within
(30) days.
You have a right to add a summary explanation to your
credit report if your dispute is not resolved to your
satisfaction.
This is just a summary of the laws that pertain to the
consumer contained in the Fair Credit Reporting Act, for
the complete text go to the FTC’s website located
at http://www.ftc.gov.
The first step in developing a plan of action is to know
what is contained in your credit file, and how to read
the file. We suggest that you have a complete credit analysis
performed and the results sent to you. Millennium Credit
Service provides a Credit Analysis Program that can analyze
your credit report and give the consumer a guide to what
needs to be corrected to improve their credit rating,
to find out more about this service and other services
offered by Millennium Credit Service visit their website
at http://www.millennium-credit.com.
Now that you have a firm understanding of what information
is contained on your credit report, and if you had an
analysis performed you have a general idea of how to start
rebuilding better credit, it is time to start developing
your strategy:
First, go through the report and ensure that all of the
personal information is correct, this includes social
security number, address, employment, and name. This information
should match information provided on any future credit
applications.
Verify all accounts contained on the credit file, make
sure they are all of your accounts and if there are any
entries that are not yours list them as items to be disputed.
Items that are not yours can be disputed and the agency
has (30) day to correct any inaccurate entries.
Check the date of last activity on all negative accounts
because they can only be reported for up to (7) years
on your report and bankruptcies up to (10) years. If any
items are older than the time listed you have the right
to have them removed from your file, but the time limit
starts from the date of last activity.
These are the first steps needed to be taken to start
rebuilding your credit, if you need any assistance or
feel that the task is a bit much, you can always hire
a professional credit repair company like Millennium Credit
Service to do the work for you. Just remember there is
nothing a credit repair company can do for you that you
can’t do yourself, the only difference is that these
companies deal with consumer reporting agencies all the
time, and they provide an objective professional attitude
when repairing their clients credit. This is important
because it relieves the consumer of the headaches and
frustrations of deal with consumer reporting agencies,
but be sure to hire a company that gets paid for services
performed and does not require up-front payment.
About The Author
T.B. Collins is the president of Millennium Credit Service,
and has been offering credit repair advice for over 10
years. To find out more visit http://www.millennium-credit.com. |
