How to Know When Your Credit Repair is Complete

If you’re not careful, you could end up focusing on credit repair for years and years. In reality, there’s only so much credit repair you can do before you have to stop and let your credit score rebound based on your spending activity. Here are some signs to let you know it’s time to move on from the credit repair phase of your quest to a better credit score.

You’ve Already Disputed Everything

It’s fruitless to keep disputing the same information over and over again. The credit bureaus will just toss out your disputes as frivolous and the negative information will stay. Unless the credit bureau simply doesn’t respond within 30-45 days, don’t waste time with multiple disputes. Instead, dispute with the credit bureau once. If the negative information doesn’t budge, then follow up with the creditor using a pay for delete, goodwill letter, or even a credit report dispute for legitimately inaccurate information.

You can complain to the FTC if you believe the credit bureaus have violated your rights in responding to your credit report dispute letter. You send a complaint to the FTC online via ftccomplainstassist.gov.

You’ve Taken Action With All Your Creditors

At the beginning of your credit repair, you should have gone through each negative account on your credit report and made a note about how you’d handle that account: dispute, goodwill letter, pay for delete, debt settlement, or nothing. You’re not necessarily finished just because you’ve sent off the letters. You may have to follow up or make payment on certain accounts. For example, with a pay for delete or debt settlement, you need to make payment to finalize the account.

Once you’ve sent your letters and made payment as necessary, check your credit report to make sure your account status has been updated the way it’s supposed to. Goodwill accounts won’t always be deleted, but some of them will be. You might follow up with another goodwill letter for the accounts that aren’t updated, but don’t bombard the creditor with letters. Pay for delete accounts should be deleted if the creditor has agreed. Settled accounts should be updated as settled. Those accounts you’ve decided to leave alone will keep their current status until they fall off your credit report.

There’s Nothing Else to Do

After you’ve done everything you can to scrub the negative information from your credit report, it’s safe to call it quits with credit repair. Remember credit repair is the process that removes negative information from your credit report. So ending your credit repair efforts doesn’t mean you’re going to stop trying to get a better credit score. The next step is to focus on rebuilding your credit. That’s an entirely different process that includes more steps. Rebuilding your credit score involves adding positive information to your credit report so the negative information is outshined. The more positive payment account history you add to your credit report each month, the more your credit score will improve. Credit repair will only take you so far. Rebuilding your credit will take you the rest of the way.

Similar Posts:

• Take Your Credit Repair One Step at a Time
• Credit Repair Under Age 21
• Pay for Delete: Removing Unwanted Credit Report Accounts
• What Are Some Common Strategies to Pay Off Derogatory Accounts?
• How to Dispute Credit Report Information