Overcoming a Bad Credit History

Establishing new credit

One of the first steps to overcoming bad credit is to work on establishing new credit lines to begin supplying your credit history with positive reports. Often this new credit line can come in the form of a low credit limit credit card, and you should take quite a bit of care to make sure that you stay up to date on your payments for the new card. As you continue to make on-time payments, you'll begin to build up a comfortable amount of positive reports in your credit. It will still take some time until your credit begins to show the effects of this, but every little bit can help in the long run.

Repaying older debts

After you've begun building up some positive credit reports, it's time to start working on getting rid of older debts so that they don't add any additional negative reports to your credit history. Request a copy of your credit report, using it to find any outstanding debts that you might have so that you can contact the debtor directly in an effort to work out a payment plan to get the remaining debt paid off. As you gradually pay off your older debts, you'll find that the lack of new negative reports and the buildup of positive reports will start to show some small improvements in your credit score.

Repairing your credit

Of course, there's more to credit repair than simply paying off your old debts. Negative reports take time to expire, sometimes years... though once they do begin to expire you might begin to notice rapid improvements in your credit score. In order to help the process along, you should also take the time to review your credit report for inaccuracies or errors and report any that you find to the issuing credit bureau. They will investigate any claims that there may be errors on your report, and if they find in your favor or do not receive a response to their inquiries then the questionable entry will simply be removed so that it no longer negatively influences your credit report.


John Mussi is the founder of Direct Online Loans who help homeowners find the best available loans via the www.directonlineloans.co.uk website.


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