4 Great ways to get your credit report back on track
If you’re a patient person and it’s not any kind of federal debt you can rest assured that your credit report will heal itself after 7 years.
1. You need to obtain a current copy of credit report
This is important so that you can understand what has been reported on you. Relax because this free. Just Google free credit report and you’ll have plenty of options you can choose from. Don’t get credit monitoring confused with a credit report though.
A credit monitoring service will charge you a monthly fee to notify you of any changes that happen to your report and they also protect you from identity theft. Whatever option you decide to go with be prepared to answer a bunch of questions so they can make sure you are who you say you are. You should be able to get it instantly or you can have it mailed to you which usually take less than ten days.
2. Contact them
In your credit report you can find a number to call whoever it is that you owe money to, whether it’s a collection agency or maybe even something that you didn’t do. Once you get ahold of someone tell them that you want to settle the debt and ask them what they will accept to cancel it and have it removed from your report.
You’ll be surprised at how fair many of them are as well as what they’re willing to accept. However, some may not be very fair or even nice to you. If you can’t agree on anything and you start to feel your temperature rise, ask yourself this question:
Do I really want to wait 7 years for this to eventually come off of my record?
The answer you come up with will determine whether you should negotiate further or tell them to take a hike and you can mark your calendar for 7 years.
3. Get a loan and consolidate everything
Most likely, you probably don’t have enough cash on hand to pay off all of your creditors. What you can do here is add up how much you’ll need to get one loan and pay everyone off at once.
You may be wondering if the banks will even give you a loan because of you’re messed up credit report. Most likely, you will not get a loan from the traditional lenders and banks; however, there are specialized lenders aka Bad credit lenders out there to help you.
The downside is that these lenders will charge you more than the traditional banks will, but they will also take into consideration how much you make and if you’re able to afford the payments.
4. Don’t make the same mistakes that led to a poor credit score
If you get yourself into a pinch and you’re not able to pay your bills, contact your lender and come to some type of understanding. They will want to you to pay them back and will usually offer you some kind of solution to help you achieve this.
If they have to go through the process of hiring a debt collecting company it costs them money and they would much rather work out a solution with you.
