How Do I Quickly Rebuild a Credit Score?

More than 30 million Americans have credit scores in the low 600s or under. If you find yourself in this situation, you will pay more for any kind of credit. Whether your bad score results from unemployment, illness or careless management, you can improve it if your finances have stabilized and you manage them responsibly. Better yet, several fast techniques to repair your credit cost nothing.

Instructions

1

Get your credit reports and scores. Go to AnnualCreditReport.com or contact TransUnion, Experian and Equifax directly. You need to first assess the the state of your credit in order to repair it.

2

Dispute errors in your credit reports and have them corrected. Contact the major credit bureaus to ask them to correct incorrect information on late payments, low credit limits or other significant errors, as MSN Money author Liz Pulliam Weston suggests. Speed up the process by contacting the credit bureaus online.

3

Stop charging, and pay down the balances on your credit cards to 20 percent or less of the total credit limit on your cards. Kimberly Langford of Kiplinger's Personal Finance states that approximately a third of your credit score depends on the amount of your total credit card limits that you use. She says that a high used-to-available credit ratio will lower your score even if you never make a late payment.

4

Increase the credit you have available on your existing cards. This also will improve your ratio of credit used to credit available without costing you money. If you have a good payment record, call each credit card company's customer service number and ask them to increase your credit limit. Do not increase your borrowing, however, or your ratio will not improve.

5

Use your longest-standing account or accounts every few months. This will help your credit score because the bureaus value a long credit history. Keeping your oldest accounts active will give them more weight in your score.

6

Avoid mistakes that can counteract your positive actions, as Liz Pulliam Weston warns. Don't make any late payments; these will hamper your attempts to raise your score. Don't transfer balances if they end up on a low-limit card; keep small amounts spread around several cards. Do not apply for new credit if you already have a number of accounts.