How to improve your credit score by yourself

A high credit score is essential if you want to be able to afford the necessities of life: from simply purchasing a phone on contract, to get approval for a loan and having low interest rates.

While studies show that approximately 80% of all credit reports contain some kind of errors in them, a lot of times our life decisions are directly responsible for having a bad credit report.

If you are one of the many people who want to repair their credit, but don’t want to turn to credit repair companies, here’s some piece of advice that might help you accomplish that on your own.

• The first thing you should do if you have bad credit is check your credit reports for errors. As we’ve already mentioned, around 80% of all credit reports contain errors that are not the owner’s fault. Before moving on to any other steps, order your credit reports and review them thoroughly, to make sure there’s nothing suspicious in there
• If you don’t find any errors, you should skip this step. If, on the other hand, you do, you have to dispute the errors. You will be guided through the process when you receive your credit reports, because they come with instructions on how to do that
• Start working on your money spending and your debts. Repairing your bad credit is not rocket science. It can be accomplished by following some simple rules: pay your debts and pay them on time and don’t apply for new credit. After you succeed with your debts, become more financial responsible, make a budget and STICK TO IT. Don’t spend more than you know you can afford. Oftentimes, all it takes in order to become more responsible with our finances is to organize our income and write down on a piece of paper all the monthly expenses we have (mortgage, groceries, bills). When you don’t have a clear idea on the value of your regular expenses, you might be tempted to spend more than you should
• Don’t give in into the temptation of applying for new credit. Too many within a period of 2 years will affect your credit report. Once you paid off all your debts, you might get tempted to apply for new credit, especially if the terms sound really good and you are lured with discounts and other perks. Try to resist all that!
• Closing your credit cards is not such a good idea. Try to avoid it. Closing your credit card account doesn’t really help with your credit score. Most likely, the opposite will happen. The longer your credit history is, the better your credit score will be.

If you still have a poor credit score after applying all these tips, ultimately you’re going to have to learn to be patient. Improving a credit report takes time and generally, negative items on a credit report will come off after 7 years. In case of bankruptcy, it will take 10 years.