Take Your Credit Repair One Step at a Time

The credit repair process can be completely overwhelming. That’s one of the reasons people put off credit repair – it seems like too big of a task to take on at one time. But, when you break it up into manageable pieces, the process gets a little easier.

Step One: Figure Out What’s Wrong

Credit repair always starts with a credit report check. Your credit report will help you figure out what you need to repair. Look over your credit report for all negative information. Use a highlighter or pen to call attention to each account on your credit report that’s causing problems. Don’t try to do this entire step in a single day. In fact, you might take a week or two to digest everything that’s in your credit report.

Step Two: Figure Out What to Do

Once you’ve highlighted the negative information in your credit report, next you have to figure out what you want to do for each negative account. You’re not actually going to take action yet; you’ll just plan out the steps. Inaccurate accounts should be disputed with the credit bureaus. You can use a pay for delete letter with past due accounts that have yet to be paid. You might send a goodwill letter for negative accounts that have already been paid. Consider debt settlement for accounts with balances that are too high to pay off. Finally, you may have to leave some accounts alone and let them age off your credit report.

Take a few days to decide what you want to do for each account. Again, you don’t have to rush to take action. If you do too much too soon, you might get overwhelmed.

Step Three: Organize Your Attack

To be more effective in credit repair, it helps to look at your accounts based on the action you’re going to take. For example, you might make a list for accounts that need to be disputed, another list for accounts that need pay for delete letters, etc. Grouping your accounts this way makes it easier to take action.

Step Four: Send Credit Repair Letters

The fastest way to get started with credit repair is to send letters on accounts that don’t require payment. This means sending out credit report dispute letters for credit report errors and goodwill letters for accounts that have already been paid. A goodwill letter simply requests the creditor to remove an account from your credit report on a goodwill basis.

Step Five: Send Pay for Delete and Settlement Offers As You’re Able

Both pay for delete and debt settlement offers require you to have enough money to pay for the account once the creditor accepts your offer. This means you have to start putting money aside before you make a request for an account to be deleted in exchange for deletion or you ask the creditor to settle the account for less than the balance. This is often the most difficult step, but if you can be diligent amount saving money every month, even this part of credit repair can be accomplished.

Credit repair can be intimidating, but when you break the process down into several steps it’s manageable.

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