A bad credit Doutor Score can affect so many different areas of a person’s life, and makes life far more difficult than if you had a good credit score. A bad credit score can lock you out of the best loans, best credit cards, best apartments, houses, and even jobs. Because of this, repairing a bad credit report is extremely important. And should be taken on with all the strength and gusto that can be mustered.
The problem is that there is a lot of conflicting information out there about how to repair your credit score. And some of this information is just flat out wrong. Then you have the thousands of guys who want your money before offering any information at all. And outright scammers on top of that. The good news is that while there is no guarantee that every person in the world can upgrade their credit score ‘X’ number of points in ‘X’ amount of days, for most consumers with bad credit in the low to mid 500s or even worse, there are definite ways you can repair your damaged credit score quickly, and 120 points or more isn’t out of the question.
Step #1: Stabilize!
Some of you might already have done this step, but for those who haven’t this is critical. Don’t overpay all your credit card bills $20 a month when you have an old $150 bill sitting in collections. That doesn’t make any sense. The first part of quickly turning around your credit score 120 points or more is to stabilize your current situation.
This means every single bill needs to paid on time every month. If you have bills that are 120 days or more overdue. Pay them or work out a payment plan to avoid those from going to collections. If your bills are 90 days overdue, keep them from going 120. Same process with bills that are 30 and 60 days overdue, and especially for bills that are late. But haven’t hit that 30 day mark where most get report.
Some credit bureaus have your history of on time (or not) payments account for up to a third of your entire credit score. Even if you’ve been bad about this, paying all your bills on time for even a few months after a long history of not can show immediate dividends for your credit score. On the other side, getting hit with one 30 day overdue mark can drop you 50 points or more in one hit.
Many other credit scores have the 30 day mark account for up to one third of your credit score. So do not let late bills hit this bench mark. Once you are stabilize so you are at least paying all of your bills on time. Add an extra penny to credit card bills, car loans, mortgage loans, bank loans, or student loans.