If you want to know some initial steps on clearing up bad credit then you'll want to read this article. Discussion will be made as to your first initial steps to clean up credit report inaccuracies. Then some discussion on how credit scores are determined and how to communicate with the credit bureaus.
After reading this article you will have an idea of the steps you need to take to identify bad spots on your credit, how to understand the credit numbers in your account and how to communicate with a good chance of clearing your record of bad marks.
So the very first step is to take an analysis of where you're at financially. Everyone is entitled to one free report from each of the 3 credit reporting agencies. Sending a request to Experian, TransUnion and Equifax is the order of the day.
When you get the reports back you are looking for discrepancies in anything that is identified. Whether a late payment was reversed or never was needs to be noted. These reports are the crux of the FICO score and anything derogatory in them will certainly affect your score.
Understanding how FICO derives your credit score is something that you will need to do your due diligence in so that you understand how even late payments come into play and affect that score. FICO scores range from 300 to 850. In actuality anything over 700 is considered an excellent score and only a few percentage of the people actually have 850.
Getting back to the reports that you received and noting discrepancies. You will need to contact the bureaus immediately and correct the problem. Do not email but send a letter. This makes a better impact knowing that you have taken the time to manually write a letter to correct a wrong here. That will go a long ways in getting a better response than by email.
As always any type of communication that you have with the credit bureaus make copies. It always seems to happen that the more important documents get misplaced, lost, mismanaged or whatever else the case may be. If you have copies of every correspondence that you send concerning your financial plight the better off you will be.
So in understanding the importance of that credit score is directly associated with your credit report you need to know what they are thinking of you. Get those reports and make sure that they are accurate, if not then start writing those letters to get your FICO score higher.
