How to Improve Credit Scores
Hello, this is Lev Selecter, and today’s topic is five simple ways to improve your credit score. Well the first thing to do is to go to main credit reporting agencies and also to myfileco.com and get information about your credit reports and your latest scores. There are many sources where you can get reports and scores but I really recommend to go to the main sources and pay money, each report will be 10, 15 dollars, so you’ll spend 40, 50, 60 dollars. But it’s really better to go to the original sources. So after you have your three credit reports, you’ll see that they may have some differences between them and then you will get your fileco score based on one of those reports, maybe 03, now you have something to work on. You know exactly where you are and you look at those reports and you’ll identify records that you want to dispute, records that you want to remove. So five simple things you can do, first is your late records. Late records sometimes, recent late records maybe easiest to remove and what you can do is just call your creditor and ask them that this is a single event and usually not late and just remove it as a courtesy to you. Tell them you don’t know how it happens, you don’t recall being late, you don’t recall receiving the bill, or something like that and if you have good relationship with them, sometimes, one telephone call is all you need to remove the record. The second thing you can do is to actually pay or settle with the creditors. Again, this is a standard procedure, if you have a regional creditor like a credit card, sometimes it would be difficult, because they prefer to pay the minimum instead of settling. But if you’re situation is really, really bad, then you may convince them. But if you are working with the, consulting, with a collection agency, of course, you can settle. So this is also what the common tactic, but make sure that you get a letter that the account is paid and the remaining balance is zero and no more collections or whatever should be done. Ask them to notify credit reporting agency but also give the letter so you can notify the credit reporting agencies yourself. The third thing is dispute with credit reporting agencies, if you see information which is not correct and you think this should be remove, the best way to dispute it is to write a letter explaining why you’re disputing it, write some documentations if necessary, but don’t incriminate yourself ever. And then wait for 30 days, according to fair credit reporting act, credit reporting agencies are suppose to verify this information and remove it if they cannot verify it for 30 days. So this works for your advantage and it’s a very simple procedure to write a letter, just make sure you send it by certified mail and make sure you have all the copies for your files. Fourth method is to get more positive records on your report. Lenders are very fast in reporting bad information but if you’re standing with them as good as they may not necessarily the report, so what you can do, you can go to those lenders and ask them to report good information or to give you a letter that you’re paying on time and then send this letter to the credit reporting agencies. And the fifth method is to reduce your debt to available credit on each account and on average on all your account to less than 30, 35 percent. When fileco is calculated, they take into account your balance to available credit ratio, on each account separately and then together. So just one max out credit card can decrease your score by as much as 30 points, so try to redistribute your debt and keep the ratio of debt to available credit as low as 30, 35 percent. Okay, so these are the five basic methods, of course, you might have more difficult situations like judgments, or if you have more time then you can use other methods. But these are the five most basic methods. Okay, this was Lev Selecter, and if you need more information, we have much more information, our guides and our videos, you can find them on our website, 101creditrepair.com. Thank you.