You might think it’s impossible to repair your credit on your own, but you’d be surprised at how easy it is. For example, if you have late payments on your report that can be proven to be the fault of someone else, you can dispute them with the credit bureaus and potentially have them removed from your report entirely. If there are accounts or debts on your report that shouldn’t be there (a common problem caused by identity theft), you can submit a proof of deletion letter to the credit bureaus, which will force them to remove the negative items.
Step 1: Get Your Bills Organized
Step 2: Look Over Your Report Carefully
Another thing you might want to do when reviewing your report is to check it for hard inquiries from companies you don’t remember applying for credit from old loans/credit cards/accounts that are no longer active but still show up on your report. Once again, these can be disputed with evidence (in this case a copy of a letter stating that the account was closed) and should be contested if they are erroneous or out-of-date information.
Step 3: Discuss With Your Creditors
Step 4: Notify The Bureaus About Any Errors
Step 5: Submit Dispute Letters For All Reported Accounts
Here are a few tips to make the process go smoothly: