Ordering your free credit report is probably the last thing on your mind when you’re yearning for a new car, but unless you’re going to pay cash for that new car, it is something you should do before you start to shop.

You know that at least 25% of all credit reports contain errors. Making sure that your credit scores aren’t being pulled down by some stranger’s negative information is reason enough to take the few minutes to order a free credit report.

If you wait until you’ve found your dream car to find out that your scores are low, one of two things will happen:

1. You’ll lose out on the car because even if the lender agrees to finance it, you won’t be willing to pay the interest rate offered. 2. You’ll go ahead and buy at a higher interest rate – and waste thousands of dollars in interest payments.

Correcting mistakes can take a couple of months, so you should get your free credit report just as soon as you start dreaming about that new car.

Along with a stranger’s negative information, your credit report could contain information that should have been removed long ago. Only a bankruptcy should still be showing on your credit report after 7 years, but mistakes do happen. So if you’ve had some financial troubles in the past, they could still be affecting your credit scores.

You could also find that one keystroke in error has reported your true debt as higher than it really is, or your available credit as lower. If you do any typing or data entry yourself, you know how easy it is to make an error.

But there’s one more reason why when you begin thinking “I need a new car” you should also be thinking “I need a free credit report with scores.”

It’s because not all car dealers are honest. You probably already knew that, but thought it applied to misrepresenting a car. It also applies to misrepresenting your financial picture, and thus the loan you’ll be offered.

If you don’t know your own credit scores, a car dealer can tell you anything. And if he’s in line to profit by you paying a higher interest rate based on your “poor credit scores” he’s apt to tell you what he wants you to believe.

Protect yourself from that kind of shady dealing by knowing your credit scores before you talk to a car dealer.

Article Source: http://www.approvedarticles.com

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Understanding the Critical Nature of Your Credit Report

Consumer credit reports are used today for far more than they were initially intended. Originally, credit reports were just that, reports that reflected how you were managing credit granted to you in terms of current balances, payments, etc. They were not originally intended to be used for other purposes, as they largely are today, yet most consumers are not aware of this important fact.

Now, though, consumer credit reports are being used for such things as determining your car insurance rates. Insurance companies claim people with low credit scores make more claims on their insurance, and they allegedly have all kinds of statistics to back up that bold statement, and therefore will charge you more for car insurance, regardless of your driving record, if your credit score is lower.

Many employers have made running a credit check a routine part of their standard background check before making offers to potential new hires. Again, it’s those statistics they obtain which allegedly show that people with lower credit scores do not take financial responsibilities seriously, and a low score could prevent you from getting a job you are well-qualified for.

Because of these new uses, as well as the original ones, you should understand that there are things that can make your credit report look bad, even if you otherwise have good credit. Here’s a few:

* Credit Report Errors: Errors can find their way onto your credit report, and unless you pro-actively find them and dispute them, they may never go away. Your credit report could include a charge-off that belonged to someone else, for example. This is not as uncommon as you may think, and in fact, many studies have shown that a majority of people do have errors in their credit report with at least one if not more of the credit reporting agencies.

* Other Information: Credit reports don’t just contain credit information. They also include employer information, salary information, and other non-credit specific information. If this is incorrect, it can negatively impact your credit score.

* Trend Upwards: From a financial perspective, your credit report displays the trend of how you manage credit. If you had credit issues a couple years ago, but have since cleaned up your credit act, your report will show a positive upward trend, and your credit score will reflect it.

* Pay Ahead: One of the worst things for a potential lender to see on your credit report is late payments. Even if you weren’t late with your payments, your credit report may still show as if you were. Here’s what might have happened. Your payment is due on the 1st of the month. You mail the check on the 25th, but it doesn’t arrive until the 31st or the 1st. And then, it isn’t posted to your account for another few days. That payment you made on time now shows as a few days late. The same can happen with electronic payments through your bank account. Though you may pay the bill the day before it’s due, it could take 3-5 days (or more, depending on both your bank and the creditor) before your payment is processed. Be aware that the date your payment is POSTED is the date they consider, and NOT the date that you made the payment. Make your payment earlier so you don’t get dinged for late payments.

Your best option is to obtain copies of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. You are entitled to one free report each year. Review your reports, and make sure that everything listed there is accurate, and if it isn’t, start the dispute process as soon as possible.

By keeping an eye on your credit report, and doing everything you can to keep it as clean as possible, you’ll ensure that a high credit score is waiting for you, when you need it.

For more insights and additional information about how to correct errors in your Credit Report as well as getting free copies of your credit reports from all three major credit reporting agencies, please visit our web site at www.credit-help-center.com

Article Source: http://www.thecontentcorner.com

Ordering your free credit report is probably the last thing on your mind when you’re yearning for a new car, but unless you’re going to pay cash for that new car, it is something you should do before you start to shop.

You know that at least 25% of all credit reports contain errors. Making sure that your credit scores aren’t being pulled down by some stranger’s negative information is reason enough to take the few minutes to order a free credit report.

If you wait until you’ve found your dream car to find out that your scores are low, one of two things will happen:

1. You’ll lose out on the car because even if the lender agrees to finance it, you won’t be willing to pay the interest rate offered. 2. You’ll go ahead and buy at a higher interest rate – and waste thousands of dollars in interest payments.

Correcting mistakes can take a couple of months, so you should get your free credit report just as soon as you start dreaming about that new car.

Along with a stranger’s negative information, your credit report could contain information that should have been removed long ago. Only a bankruptcy should still be showing on your credit report after 7 years, but mistakes do happen. So if you’ve had some financial troubles in the past, they could still be affecting your credit scores.

You could also find that one keystroke in error has reported your true debt as higher than it really is, or your available credit as lower. If you do any typing or data entry yourself, you know how easy it is to make an error.

But there’s one more reason why when you begin thinking “I need a new car” you should also be thinking “I need a free credit report with scores.”

It’s because not all car dealers are honest. You probably already knew that, but thought it applied to misrepresenting a car. It also applies to misrepresenting your financial picture, and thus the loan you’ll be offered.

If you don’t know your own credit scores, a car dealer can tell you anything. And if he’s in line to profit by you paying a higher interest rate based on your “poor credit scores” he’s apt to tell you what he wants you to believe.

Protect yourself from that kind of shady dealing by knowing your credit scores before you talk to a car dealer.

Article Source: http://www.approvedarticles.com

Having a good credit report can make your life so much easier and offer numerous more financing opportunities later in life, the whole time saving you a ton of money financing everyday things along with big ticket items such as cars and housing. Even the rates you end up paying for car insurance or the ability to find a great job more than likely are affected by your credit reports and your credit scores. Just try to rent a nice apartment while having collections and judgements on your credit!
The negative items on your credit report might be there because of financial decisions that you had made in the past or they could be legitimate errors made by creditors or the credit bureaus themselves. Regardless of how these black marks found their way on your reports, we will talk about identifying them and also the steps needed to remove them most effectively.
How to Find Negative Items on Your Credit Report:
It is simple to see how errors may find their way to your credit report when you think of the total amount of information that finds its way to the credit bureaus everyday. There are literally millions upon millions of accounts that get reported every week. That is why it is so crucial to keep an eye on the items that are being reported on your credit report. I suggest you sign up for a monthly credit watch program such as MyCreditKeeper.com or several others that are available for around $10 per month.
After you have received a copy of all three of your major credit reports including, Equifax, Trans Union and Experian you should go through line by line checking for mistakes. Look at your personal information along with the public records sections and accounts. You want to check for anything that is possibly negative to your credit rating such as late payments, judgements, charge offs and collections. Are your addresses and personal information correct? Are there more than one variation of your name or social security number?

Correcting the Errors and Removing Negative Items:
You have several options here including: writing letters yourself and corresponding with the credit bureaus on your own, or hiring a professional credit repair service. I personally suggest the later, as it is best to have someone versed in handling the credit bureaus and creditors daily, to handle your disputing process. Professional credit repair companies know the ins and outs of credit, as that is what they do every day. Of course, if you have time to study and learn the laws that are in place to protect you as a consumer then handling your own credit repair might be the answer for you. If that is the case, I suggest finding a credit repair forum as you will have many questions.

Article Source: http://www.itempad.com

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With the economic situation the way it is and home values down, many people have found that their once perfect credit is now tainted with late fees, over limit fees, closed accounts, and in the worse situations credit cards and loans that can no longer be paid, along with possibly bankruptcy or even foreclosure. However, with all these negative marks on their credit, credit scores are now even more important than before and banks, car dealerships, mortgage companies, and credit card companies are making getting loans and credit even harder than before.

Not to mention that jobs, insurance companies, and a slew of other companies are also pulling credit reports now before approving applications or even offering jobs. In the dire straight of the economy the need to repair credit report has become even more imperative than before. Even if you plan to never own a credit card again or always pay in cash, fixing the credit you have is still important and if you can should be done.

Some basic steps to fix your credit to improve credit score are:

* Get all your credit reports, from all three agencies, which are Trans Union, Experian, and Equifax

* Make sure all the information on the reports are correct

* Fix any and all information that is incorrect, misspelled, or wrong in any way

* Have any incorrect accounts or information removed immediately

* Contact the credit bureaus by filling out the appeal form they offer and by phone when necessary

* Contact all banks and credit card companies to see about negotiating terms to lower your interest rate, payment amount, and to remove all late fees and over limit fees

* Cancel almost all your credit cars, keep one or two for emergencies, but cancel the rest

* Close all loan accounts, even if they are not paid yet, close them now as you pay them off

* If the banks or credit card companies will not work with you, contact a credit repair agency to negotiate terms for you

* Make sure to make all payments on time from there on out

* Do not open any new accounts or apply for any additional loans, the extra hits on your credit will lower your score further, especially if you are denied

Credit report repair usually takes time. It will not happen overnight. It will take a lot of patience and due diligence to improve credit score. Making payments on time every month and correcting your credit reports will make the biggest difference. Also, again do not apply for more credit. Every hit on your credit report lowers your credit score even further.

Remembering that it will take time and not to become frustrated or give up. Following these simple steps to repair credit report will pay off over time. After a year or two you will see definite improvements on your credit reports and probably in your business relations as well.

It is never a hopeless situation, no matter how bad your credit report looks, it can be repaired. Information does fall off after a few years and you can get your credit back on track and in good standing again.

With the economic situation the way it is and home values down, many people have found that their once perfect credit is now tainted with late fees, over limit fees, closed accounts, and in the worse situations credit cards and loans that can no longer be paid, along with possibly bankruptcy or even foreclosure. However, with all these negative marks on their credit, credit scores are now even more important than before and banks, car dealerships, mortgage companies, and credit card companies are making getting loans and credit even harder than before.

Not to mention that jobs, insurance companies, and a slew of other companies are also pulling credit reports now before approving applications or even offering jobs. In the dire straight of the economy the need to repair credit report has become even more imperative than before. Even if you plan to never own a credit card again or always pay in cash, fixing the credit you have is still important and if you can should be done.

Some basic steps to fix your credit to improve credit score are:

* Get all your credit reports, from all three agencies, which are Trans Union, Experian, and Equifax

* Make sure all the information on the reports are correct

* Fix any and all information that is incorrect, misspelled, or wrong in any way

* Have any incorrect accounts or information removed immediately

* Contact the credit bureaus by filling out the appeal form they offer and by phone when necessary

* Contact all banks and credit card companies to see about negotiating terms to lower your interest rate, payment amount, and to remove all late fees and over limit fees

* Cancel almost all your credit cars, keep one or two for emergencies, but cancel the rest

* Close all loan accounts, even if they are not paid yet, close them now as you pay them off

* If the banks or credit card companies will not work with you, contact a credit repair agency to negotiate terms for you

* Make sure to make all payments on time from there on out

* Do not open any new accounts or apply for any additional loans, the extra hits on your credit will lower your score further, especially if you are denied

Credit report repair usually takes time. It will not happen overnight. It will take a lot of patience and due diligence to improve credit score. Making payments on time every month and correcting your credit reports will make the biggest difference. Also, again do not apply for more credit. Every hit on your credit report lowers your credit score even further.

Remembering that it will take time and not to become frustrated or give up. Following these simple steps to repair credit report will pay off over time. After a year or two you will see definite improvements on your credit reports and probably in your business relations as well.

It is never a hopeless situation, no matter how bad your credit report looks, it can be repaired. Information does fall off after a few years and you can get your credit back on track and in good standing again.

Article Source: http://www.articlewarehouse.com

Mark is the author of “Crushing The Credit Bureaus” a do it yourself credit repair encyclopedia that focuses on repairing negative information on your credit report to help improve credit score. Fix your credit at crushingthecreditbureaus.com now.

The most effective way to better your credit report is to manage credit responsibly over time. Clearly the best way to do that is to pay your bills on time every month. It?s very important to live below your means so that you have enough money every month to pay them. None of the tips I?m going to tell you about will work long-term if you can?t get your spending habits under control.
Here are some fast tips to help you better your credit reports now.
Learn How the Credit System Works.
If you don?t know how this game works, you?re not going to win it. It?s just something that every single consumer is going to have to eventually learn in their life time. The sooner you learn, the better off your life will be. Yes, your credit score is that important. Don?t listen to what a friend of a friend told you about credit that he heard from his parents. There?s a lot of misinformation getting spread around. Get your information from the top financial sites and books on the subject.
Keep Your Credit Card Balances Low.
High balances on credit cards and other revolving accounts hurt your report. Try to keep your balances under 30% of your available credit limit. Never let it get higher than 50%. This is extremely important. Never give the appearance to the banks that you are ?strapped?. Once you let them see that you?re using almost all of the credit made available to you, it appears to them that you are in a state of financial emergency. It?s calculated in the FICO scoring algorithm and everything. At that point, only very high interest rate lenders will give you loans.
Apply New Credit Accounts Only as Needed.
Applying for new accounts lowers your credit scores; especially if you apply for too many in a short time period. If you know you have negative credit scores, don?t apply for anything. It?s amazing how some people know they have negative credit scores, but still keep trying. ?It?s worth a try.? No, it?s not. Every time you ?try? you hurt your credit report even more ? STOP!
Delete Negative Accounts.
This step is my favorite. This is what credit repair is all about. Learn how to get negative accounts removed from your credit report or hire a credit repair agency to do it for you. Deleting such accounts is probably the single fastest way to improve your credit report.

Article Source: http://www.itempad.com

There is so much information out there about credit repair and debt consolidation that the average consumer can Google search the subject and still be left at the end of the day, wondering what really works. Well here it is straight from the horse’s mouth. I’ve spent the last decade working with consumers in the credit industry and can share with you the most common misconceptions in credit that most people don’t understand.

First let’s begin with this idea that credit repair organizations are some sort of scam shop because they do what the average consumer can do on their own. Yes it’s true you can go and do the same thing a credit repair organization does, however from my experience this isn’t why people hire a credit repair company. It’s because they don’t have the time or the knowledge to be bothered with it all, and most importantly they want it to be done right. If you were charged with a crime you didn’t do, would you represent yourself in court? You certainly could if you wanted to but you would probably hire an attorney if you could afford to do so. Just like hiring an attorney or choosing to represent yourself, most people would rather have a professional who works in that industry and handles that type of situation every day to work on their behalf. Credit repair organizations specialize in knowing what the laws state pertaining to credit, how credit scores are calculated and generated.

Your credit repair company should be able to assist you with obtaining the credit of your dreams and know the steps on how to do this. This is why people would rather pay to have them fix their credit and rebuild. Now with that being said, there are many credit repair organizations that mislead individuals by making false promises to consumers, for example a credit repair organization can’t promise that items that belong on your credit will be removed from your credit history. The Law only allows you to have items not belonging to you removed from your credit report. Before I go too far into what you can and can’t have removed from your credit history, I would advise having a professional look at your credit history and tell you what is being reported inaccurately.

With all that being said, I want you to understand that no matter what is deleted from your credit report the fastest way of raising your score is keeping your oldest credit accounts open and paying down the balance below 8% of your credit limit. This is the true key to having a good credit score. Most people believe that their credit score is low because of some factoring accounts, when in fact it’s low because they failed to ever establish any real credit in the first place. They never had any accounts opened for any substantial amount of time that was reported on time each month. We’re not just talking car loans or your mortgage whereas those are installment accounts that will raise your debt to credit ratio in most cases. You need to show that someone gave you a line of credit, like a credit card, and you paid it on time every month and you didn’t charge it to its limit, it’s the available credit that’s going to show that although you have the ability to spend more you are responsible and conservative towards your available credit.

Most people fall into one of these two scenarios:

Scenario 1:
You have bad credit because of an automobile repossession or late payments, broken leases, hospital bills or some utility bills. Your credit is so easily fixable.

The secrets to raising your credit score is in your ability to manage the accounts that you currently have open, so if your looking at your credit history and you don’t have any open accounts then your credit isn’t going to go up until there is something open for you to be judged by, 35% of your credit score is based on your payment history with your current accounts. I’ve found that most people seeking credit help, never even had a credit card, but have negative accounts that are in collections. If you are one of these people you need to not only get rid off your bad debt but open a secured credit card or some line of credit so other creditors can see that you now can keep up with a payment schedule. This in most cases for consumers in these situations is the single most important step to repairing there credit. Getting a little professional help can help you get rid of some of those old collection accounts and can guide you to who can give you a second chance to rebuild your credit with credit.

Scenario 2:
You have thousands of dollars in bad debt that you are struggling to pay, and had several lines of credit in the past.

Your accounts can be settled for 50% of what you owe.You must gain control over any accounts you still have open first, accounts that have already gone to collections need only to be settled. Those accounts have been sold from the original creditor and will negatively affect your credit history with you making regular payments. You will benefit the most from hiring a professional to review your credit profile because there are a number of things that can be done that will save you tons of money and get you back on track faster than just simply making your regular statements each month. There are many factors that go into your credit and many of these factors though they may seem like the right thing to do, can have a negative affect on your credit report.

To obtain more information on how to get your credit on track or simply have a credit counselor consult with you for free call 1-281-889-6033 or visit us online at http://www.AfirstCredit.com and we’d be more than happy to assist you. Happy Holidays!