Legal Credit Report Improvement

Improving your credit report improves your overall credit score and can help you obtain credit cards, lines of credits and financing for a home. Raising your credit scores can also increase your chances for employment and or award you lower insurance premiums. The fastest legal ways of improving your credit reports involves direct and decisive action on your part.

Payment History

Avoid late payment history whenever possible. Devise a plan to make on time monthly payments to all your creditors. Make more than the minimum monthly payments if you can. Consider making a list of all your creditors along with the minimum payments due and their due dates. If you have past due accounts, catch up the ones that are the most past due while making minimum monthly payments on the others. Consider creating one to two days a month that are dedicated to your bill paying process or consider monthly payments automatically withdrawn from your checking account before the due dates to avoid late payments.

Reduce Debt

Consider the amount of debt you have and reduce it. Ideally, try to keep your balances on your credit cards low whenever you can. Too many credit cards open at once can lower your credit score. You really only need two credit cards, ideally two different major cards if possible, with good payment history to show strong credit. If you have several credit cards, consider closing the ones with annual fees unless they are the only major credit cards you have.

In addition, close the ones issued by retail stores that only allow you to use the card at certain stores. The only exception to this is if these are the only types of cards you have, you are still in the process of building your credit. This shows a creditor that even though you much credit history, at least you are responsible with the cards you have and you've been able to maintain them consistently.

Convert Debt

If you choose to keep the credit cards you have open and have student loans, medical bills or maybe some past due accounts also on your report, consider converting some of that debt into installment loans. This means getting a consolidation loan from a bank or other financial lender that will pay off some of those cards, the past due accounts and whatever other debts you can comfortably fit into it. Then you pay the lender back with specific monthly payments over a specified amount of time. Once the payments are finished, the debt is gone.

It also looks better on a credit report to have a mixture of installment loans and credit cards when necessary, than to have all your debt wrapped up in credit cards alone. When lenders see installment loans on your credit reports, it tells them that eventually the debt will be paid off, unlike an open credit card where the customer can charge up to the limit again and potentially weaken financial stability.