About Bankruptcy

A bankruptcy will affect your credit score more than just about anything.  Worse, it will affect it for several years.  In the first few years after a bankruptcy, you might not be able to get loans at all. 
In short, a bankruptcy is a legal proceeding that either forgives you of your debts or allows you [Read more...]

Use Secured Credit Wisely

Secured credit is credit or a loan which uses something as collateral.  In some cases, this could be an asset like a house.  In a few cases, this collateral could be money frozen in an account by the bank for just such a purchase. 
If you require credit following a huge problem with your credit score, [Read more...]

How to Dispute Credit Report Errors

Contact each of the three major credit bureaus -  TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian – and get copies of your credit reports and credit scores.  Carefully read over the reports and note any errors.  In writing, contact the credit bureaus and ask that mistakes be removed or investigated. 
This is called a dispute letter and once it [Read more...]

Only Get Credit That You Will Use

It is easy today to apply for a store credit card that you forget all about in three years – but that account will remain on your credit report and affect your credit score as long as it is open.  Having credit lines and credit cards you don’t need makes you seem like a worse [Read more...]

Protecting Yourself From Identity Theft

Many people who are careful about paying bills on time and having minimal debts are astonished each year to find that they have low credit scores.  In many cases, this happens as a result of identity theft.  Identity theft is a kind of crime in which people take your personal information and steal that info [Read more...]

Pay Off Debt As Quickly As Possible

If you have a lot of debt, your credit score will suffer.  Paying down your debts to a minimum will assist elevate your credit score.  For example, if you have a $1500 limit on your credit card and you regularly carry a balance of $1200, you will be a less attractive credit risk to lenders [Read more...]

Don’t Get More Credit Than You Need

If you have several lines of credit or many big debts, you make a worse credit risk because you are close to “overextending your credit.”  This simply means that you might be taking on more credit than you can comfortably pay off.  Even if you are making payments regularly now on existing bills, lenders know [Read more...]

Tips to Improve Your Credit Score

Once you have your credit report and your credit score, you will be able to tell where you stand and where many of your problems lie. If you have a poor score, try to observe in your credit report what could be causing the problem:

Do you have too much debt?
Too many unpaid bills?
Have you recently [Read more...]

Know How Your Credit Score Works

If you are going to improve your credit score, then logic has it that you must understand what your credit score is and how it works. Without this information, you won’t be able to very effectively improve your score because you won’t recognize how the things you do in daily life affect your score.
If you [Read more...]

How Credit Reports Work

Credit reports are created by credit bureaus, which use information from client companies. It works like this: credit bureaus have clients – such as credit card companies and utility companies, to name just two – who provide them with information.
Once a file is begun on you (i.e. once you open a bank account or have [Read more...]

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