Clean Up Your Credit Report – Raise Your Credit Score Fast In 3 Easy Steps

These days almost everybody is seeing a hit to their credit scores. You can blame it on the recession, on bad credit habits and on poor financial management skills, maybe even the President. But, it is up to you to clean up your credit report and raise your score fast. Lets get started.

Step 1: Keep Available Credit at 30 Percent of Credit Limit

Sure, the scoring methods may be shrouded in secrecy by the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) and the three major credit reporting agencies in the United States – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion – as well as that in Canada (PRBC). These agencies have confessed that there is a correlation between how your credit score and the amount of credit you have available.

At present, the best balance in your available credit in relation to your credit limit is pegged at 30 percent. When you attain this ratio, you can immediately see an increase in your credit score by at least 24 points. For example, if your credit limit is set at $1000, your available balance should reflect an amount no greater than $300.

Step2: Limit Your Credit Inquiries

Most creditors, employers and landlords will ask for your credit report to determine your suitability for credit, employment and lease, respectively. Now, when you have made multiple requests for credit in the past two years as reflected in your credit report, you are giving off the impression that you are a bad credit risk.

What this basically means is that you should learn to limit your credit inquiries to just one a year. Any more than that and your credit score is going downhill, several points at a time.

Instead, we suggest two things. First, clean up your credit report before applying for more credit. Second, look at the list of creditors that made an inquiry on your credit reports and then dispute any creditor that did so without your express permission with any of the credit bureaus.

Step 3: Validate Your Late Payments

You must always check the accuracy in how your late payments, if any, are reported simply because inaccuracies in this regard often lower your credit score by many points. When you see any inaccuracy on your report, immediately dispute said incorrect information with the credit bureaus.

Under the law, the credit bureau has 30 days to validate their information with the original creditor and then accordingly adjust your credit score. When the original creditor does not respond and/or present proof to back up the claim on your late payments, then the credit bureaus are required by law to update your trade line to “Never Late”.

Indeed, anybody can perform these 3 steps to clean up your credit report – this is’nt rocket science. Just make sure that you also have proof of your own to back up your claims and watch as you raise your credit score fast … virtually overnight.