How to do Personal Credit Repair

Credit repair has become an essential part of personal finances in today's world. Knowing the ins and outs of how to improve your credit score can help you get approved for the things you need. Learn how to dispute negative items on your credit report to remove them. Your payment history makes up 35 percent of your credit score and improving it will raise your credit score.

Instructions

1

Order copies of your credit reports from each of the three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. You must have copies of your credit reports to know what is hurting your credit score and what is helping it. You can get a copy from each credit bureau at Annualcreditreport.com, a government-run website. You may also get a copy of your credit reports from any lender that recently pulled your credit.

2

Review your credit reports and go over every item to find out what is hurting you the most. This is most likely a public record like bankruptcy, judgment or tax lien, or it could be a collection, charge off or late payment. All of these will hurt your credit report and need to be removed to repair it.

3

Write a dispute letter to Experian, Equifax and TransUnion disputing or asking for verification on any items that you want investigated. You shouldn't go after all your negative items, because then it would look suspicious and could get your account flagged. Go after about a third of the negative items, usually those that are hurting your credit the most first.

4

Mail your dispute letters to Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. The credit bureaus will have 30 days to verify your accounts with the original creditors or those negative items will be removed from your credit reports. Once the investigation is over, the credit bureaus will each send you an updated credit report showing whether the accounts were verified or deleted.

5

Wait 60 days for each dispute cycle. You will need to continue the dispute process several times to get everything negative removed from your credit reports. This process cannot guarantee an item will be removed; it is all dependent on whether your negative items are verified by the original creditor or not. Negative items are more likely to be removed if they aren't yours or are several years old and paid off. Items that are yours can still be removed, but only if they aren't verified for some reason.