Tom Tessin asked:




Everyone knows that if you have a bad FICO score, you’re not going to be able to get a loan for your next home, auto, or even a personal loan. Since most of us can’t just throw down a few hundred thousand for a house, it’s important that we get a mortgage. Now having a bad FICO score doesn’t mean you can’t get a mortgage ever again. There are just some steps you need to take in order to improve your FICO score so that you can get that loan once again.

Get a credit report – If you haven’t received a credit report yet, you should go out and get a copy of your credit report to look it over. Make sure that you get a free report that the government allows you to get every year. When you get a hold your credit report, look it over and see if anything looks wrong or shady. If something looks fishy, you’ll want to fix it as soon as you can. There are many steps you can take; the first step I suggest you take is by calling the credit bureaus and seeing what you can do from there.

Pay your bills – No matter what you do with your bills, make sure you always attempt to pay off the minimum at least. If you don’t pay your bills, you’re going to get hit with late payment fees and this will affect your credit score a lot. Make sure that you pay at least the minimum. If you can’t afford to pay the minimum, I suggest you go out and find another ways to get money. There are many part time jobs out there that you can pay you a few extra hundred dollars a week like pizza delivery or working a retail store.

Get rid of your balances – When you’re trying to get out of debt, make your number one focus to pay off your credit card balance. Try and put as much money toward your debt as possible. This means you’ll want to cut back on the leisure expenses and focus on debt. So, instead of eating out for thirty dollars, make a five dollar meal at home and put that twenty five toward the debt.

Close a few accounts – If you have a few accounts laying around that you don’t use anymore, call up the credit card company and close them. Make sure that you know what you’re doing thought because some of your old accounts may be helping you. Credit companies love to see older established accounts. If your report shows nothing but new accounts, the companies will be a little suspicious of this. Make sure that you close a few accounts that aren’t as old as your oldest one.

If you can focus on paying off your debt and making a lot of money, fixing your debt shouldn’t be that hard at all. As long as you’re focused and determined to pay it off, you should have a problem at all.

Louise

Ken Mohn asked:




570. I was shocked and disturbed seeing the number that I long neglected checking. Must be some sort of mistake. No, that is what happens when you make a credit card payment SIXTY days late. So much for being approved for that new Honda Accord.

Monitoring your credit score is an extremely easy and important thing you can do to assure your current and future plans involving money transfer of any kind are safe. Less than two years ago, I lapsed on a credit card payment for no other reason than deciding not to open up a credit card statement that I assumed would contain a $0 balance since I had not used the card in well over a year. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that I used that credit card to purchase (how ironic is this) a CREDIT SCORE MONITORING SERVICE a year and a half before that had a yearly recurring fee if left not cancelled. I never used the service after the first week of purchasing it and I forgot completely about its existence.

My score dropped from the low 700′s to 570 because of my 60 day late payment. I should probably be happy I discovered I had a payment to make on my own rather than through the receiver of my telephone with a collector on the other end of the line.

There I stood, a 570 credit score, over $5000 in credit card debt, and I actually wanted to invest in real estate. That was why I finally decided to check my score in the first place. I wasn’t going anywhere with that score, so I started looking for ways to fix it.

The most obvious thing that came to mind after my search was that I should do whatever I could to pay off that $5000 in credit debt. But I had no money. I deciding against trying to take out a personal loan from a bank since I had terrible credit to begin with. That left me with the solution I dreaded most, borrowing from family and friends.

Before you close out this article while saying to yourself that you could never stoop to such a level, let me just remind you that the reason you are reading this in the first place is because you are looking for a way to fix your credit. I swallowed my pride and borrowed $5000 from a variety of sources close to me in order to pay off my credit debt. I made plans to pay these people off within 6 months, despite the hardship that would place on me. Honestly I wasn’t even sure it would help my score much, but even if it didn’t, I knew it would be better than having all that debt on my record. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I checked my score the following month.

654. Then the next month, 672. Now, 6 months later, it stands at 710. All I did was get that credit card debt off my credit report and transfer it to “private” lenders, namely those close to me who were willing to help. Reducing your credit utilization (how much you owe vs. the total of your limits) is the absolute best way to get your credit recovery plan off to a great start. Do whatever it takes to get your credit cards paid off, and you will reap the benefits in the very near future.

Denise