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| Improving your credit |
Today's Tips |
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Currently it is more vital than ever to have really good credit. In the recent past someone with a mediocre credit score would have had a lot of options when they were looking at buying a house, refinancing, getting a home equity loan, etc. Now their options are greatly reduced. If you want to be able to get good financing at a good rate, very good credit is a necessity. But there tends to be a big gap between knowing that you need good credit and actually having it.
However, there are a number of things you can do to improve your credit score.
-The first thing you can do is make sure all of your payments are being paid on time. If you happen to slip up and have a payment go more than 30 days late, contact the credit company and see if there is anything they can do to not report that incident to the credit bureau. If you explain to them that the late payment was due to a simple oversight, a lost bill, an unexpected trip, etc, they will often skip reporting the payment to the credit bureau. If you feel like you get someone who is less than helpful just hang up and call back. You will usually get a new person when you call back.
- Another step people often overlook is making sure their credit is evenly distributed. You shouldn't have a credit card that has basically no balance while another card is maxed out. You would be better off splitting the balance between the cards more evenly. Having your card balances below 50% of the available credit will give you the best chance at improving your credit score. If it is not possible to transfer some of the balance to another card, you may want to look at increasing the limit on the card to make it so the card is not maxed out and has some credit available.
-The next step is an option called Credit Repair. A consumer has the right to request that anything be taken off of their credit report. A credit reporting company has to either respond to the request or remove the item(s) from your credit report. If you are diligent it is possible to have almost all of the negative marks removed from your credit report. You can do this process yourself (which can be rather lengthy and often difficult for the average person) or you can have a company do this for you. I have a client who had a score in the 450's (nearly as low as it can be) who now has a score of 699. His credit repair was done over a period of 6 months but this improvement is not an unusual result. Almost anyone can be helped by this process and should look into it if they feel their credit score could use improving.
There are a number of other things that can be done to improve your score, but if you have a rather low score your best option is to look into credit repair. If you need referrals to a credit repair company or would like to find out how having certain items removed from your report will change your score, please give me a call and we can look at this together. Additionally, if you know of someone who could benefit from this data, pass it on to them.
Best Regards,
Erin Jackson
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RTL Financial
Mortgage Brokerage
503-328-8722
503-907-7717-fax
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