How to Repair Your Credit in Six Months

Negative entries on your credit report hinder your ability to get credit cards, a mortgage or a car loan. With bad credit, you pay a higher interest rate on the credit you get. The credit repair process is not quick, but with some hard work your credit score can rise in six months. If negative entries are accurate, you may have to charm your creditor into removing the information from your report. When the account goes to collection, you'll have to negotiate with the creditor to remove the entry.

Instructions

1

Pull all three of your credit reports. You get a free credit report from each credit reporting agency each year from Annual Credit Report. Go over your credit report to look for inaccurate information.

2

Make consistent, on-time payments to all open credit accounts. These payments build your credit history, pay down your balance and show responsible credit usage.

3

Pay down your current credit balances. Your utilization ratio takes into consideration your credit limits in comparison with your current balance. The lower your credit balances, the better your credit score.

4

Get a secured credit card if you don't have any open credit lines. A secured credit card is one for which you place a money in a savings account as collateral. The card limit typically matches the amount in the savings account. Make on-time payments to develop a good credit history.

5

Write your creditor and request that a late payment entry on your account be removed. Creditors are not required to comply with your request, but if you ask nicely they may remove the entry. Explain in the letter your circumstances or hardship that led to the late payment.

6

Limit the amount of credit inquiries on your credit report by not applying for credit. Excessive credit inquiries negatively impact your credit score. These inquiries stay on your report for two years.

7

Contact any collection agencies to whom you owe money. Agree to pay the debt in full in exchange for removal of the entry from your credit report. Get the agreement in writing before you send the payment. This technique is called a pay-for-delete.

8

Dispute inaccurate information on your credit reports. Each credit reporting agency provides a dispute resolution process for removing inaccurate information from your report. You may also dispute out-of-date entries. Most entries stay on your report for seven years and then drop off. If they don't drop off, the dispute process removes them.