Thursday, October 14, 2010

Restoring Your Credit after Charge-Offs

When you have a charge-off record, it only means that you are not a good candidate for credit. You will probably be denied each time you apply for credit cards, housing loans or even car loans. Your credit history would even be scrutinized if you want to borrow money for business. If you do not want such inconveniences, you should make sure that you have a charge-off-free credit report. But if you already have one, then restoring your financial credibility should be your goal.

There is actually one way you can restore your credibility after your creditor has considered your debt a charge-off and that is to settle it.

First Step: Check Financial Capability

To pay your debt resulting to this Credit Card Charge-Off - What Does It Mean and What Should You Do About It?, you must be aware where your finances stand. You will have an idea how you will manage your charge offs if you know where to get the money to pay for it. This is the time that you will have to take a really good look on the way you spend money, how much debt you owe and how you prioritize debt payments. You can choose to pay the debt in full or in partial payments depending on the outcome of your

Second Step: Create a Repayment Plan

Of course, it would be wise if you would have a repayment plan that you will present to your creditor. It would be considered to be a responsible thing to do and it would show how committed you are in removing the charge-off record on your credit report. Your repayment plan should be realistic. Do not make any offers to make a payment that you can not really make. Remember, that your creditor will give you just this one chance to correct your past credit mistakes.

Third Step: Negotiate with Your Creditor

As soon as you have a repayment plan, you are now ready to face your creditor and offer to pay the Credit Card Credit Card Charge-Off - What Does It Mean and What Should You Do About It? - What Does It Mean and What Should You Do About It?. You should make sure that you are speaking directly to an authorized representative of your bank. Also important is to document everything that will be agreed on. In cases where the charge-off is paid, it would appear on your credit report as "paid as agreed".

Once you have removed the charge-off record on your credit report, your financial credibility will be re-established. You will no longer be inconvenienced everytime your credit report is reviewed for a loan. Now, all you have to do is to make sure that these mistakes be prevented in the future.

5 Simple Steps of How to Remove Charge Offs From Your Credit Report

1. Be aggressive in repairing your own credit.

Credit repair is not going to just happen. Bad credit is not something you can ignore, hoping that it will work itself out. Things like credit card charge offs, accounts that went to collections, and late payments will stay on your credit report for 7 years. But once bills have been paid off it is much easier to have them removed. The easiest way to remove a charge off is to send the credit bureau a challenge letter, also called a dispute letter.

2. Dispute the items you want removed.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to dispute any negative items on your credit report. This means you can challenge repossessions, charge offs, collections accounts, bankruptcies, foreclosures, judgments, tax liens, and anything else you disagree with. The thing to keep in mind is that the law says you are allowed to dispute anything, so go for the charge offs for sure.

3. How to dispute items on your credit report.

First contact the credit bureaus and request a free copy of your credit report. You are entitled to one free report each year from each bureau. So as long as you have not already requested one this year, you can get a free one. Send each bureau that lists the negative item a letter telling them to remove the specific item you want removed, and why. Make a photo copy of the credit report and circle each of the items you are disputing. Put a number next to each circle, that number should correspond to a number on your letter. This makes it fool proof for the bureaus to figure out which item you are talking about in your letter.

4. The investigation process

There is nothing for you to do now but sit back, relax, and wait. The credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate the items you dispute. That time starts when they receive the letter. They will contact the original creditor notifying them of your dispute and asking them if they agree or disagree with you. From there the credit bureau must provide proof through documentation that the entries are valid. If the entries can not be validated within 30 days from the time they receive the letter, it must be removed from your credit report.

5. Following up

It is critical that you follow up with the credit bureaus. A trend that is starting to emerge with them is they simply don't remove items that have not been validated, or sometimes they don't even conduct an investigation. So if you don't get a letter within a couple weeks after the investigation should have been complete, make a call to them and find out what happened. Whatever they say, ask them to send a letter for your records.

So lets recap what you need to do. First, get a copy of your credit report. Second, review your credit report and make note of any items on the report that you want removed. Third, write your dispute letter then circle and number each item on the report that you are disputing. Fourth, sit back and wait for the investigation to be completed. Fifth, follow up if you have not received an answer within 6 weeks.

Follow these simple steps and you will be well on your way to easy credit repair. To make things even more simple, order a set of proven credit repair letters from an expert. The reason you should do that is their letters have been proven to work, because they have used them successfully to dispute items for their clients. A well written dispute letter will practically guarantee success.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Free Credit Repair Info - How and Where to Get It

The credit repair industry is enormous at present. It seems like companies are showing up all over the place. There are also websites showing up all over the Internet about credit repair. Many of those are intended to give you information for free to confuse you to the point where you click on an ad for a credit repair company. Others really do mean to give you useful help and valid free credit repair info. The fact is that credit repair is pretty simple once you understand it and if dealing with credit has been part of your profession. But to the layman, it can be overwhelming.
Having researched the topic I would like to provide some suggestions for good resources to look into for free credit repair information. One top place to go is the FTC. Simply search "FTC credit repair" and their site will be the top link in the results. Read that page and look over the PDF page too.
Another great place to visit is credit repair forums. Many exist on the internet. The users often ask questions, and more experienced people, even credit repair professionals, will answer the questions. However, you could read for days on these forums. They will all offer you the basics and they all go into depth on different aspects of free credit repair info. These may be well worth your time and energy.
One other excellent thing to seek out is website that provide software people can use to create personalized credit repair letters. There are a few of them out there, but there may be some searching involved in finding them. After all, since they're free services, they won't have ads all over the web. Just keep in mind that there are sites where you can use this software for free. And you should not have to download anything to your computer to do so. If you are asked to enter your credit card information or to download anything, my recommendation is to leave that website. Look for "self credit repair" and keep an eye out for services that offer truly free use of online software. They can allow you to make your credit dispute letters in a fraction of the time.

How Repair Credit Help Products Can Improve Your Credit

Understanding how repair credit help products and services work and how different they are from one another is your first step with addressing your strategy to improve your credit rating. If you are going to improve your score rather easily, you first must know how to pick the right product for your situation. Considering how important our credit is to us in today's society, it's a wonder how anyone can survive with bad credit these days. From getting a job to finding a descent place to live, bad credit can adversely effect all aspects of your life in today's world.
You also need to know how repair credit help services can change all that for you. By taking care of your problems now, you could prevent so much more problems down the road. Most people who are in need of repair credit services generally don't know where to begin to look for some qualified help and just wind up getting ripped off, and without seeing any kind of improvement with their situation at all.
When first deciding and then trying to learn about how repair credit help products and services can actually help you, it's best to use a source with a proven track record and is reliable for you to begin with. If your serious about improving your credit, you must be prepared to do a lot of independent research as well in order to begin. The earlier you get help with your credit issues, the easier it will be down the road to fix.
By finding a source who is familiar with how repair credit help products and services actually work, and what are the best ones will prove to be invaluable to you. credit repair services Not only would they know the best options for every particular situation, they most certainly would also know the best products or services needed to achieve this particular issue.
Whether you decide to use a reputable source with a proven track record, or if you plan on learning how repair credit help services work through your own independent research, you must make sure you fully understand what these services actually specialize in, and whether or not they can help you. A big mistake people make is they never really learn how repair credit help products and services differ from each other. And because of this, they never really learn how to fix their credit issues effectively.
Learning and understanding all the variations of how credit repair help products and services are available on the web these days is no easy task. It's important that you are prepared to learn and be willing to educate yourself as to what the differences are, and how they fit into your own situation. Also, if you find a resource that you trust make certain that they also give you lots of options to choose from before making a final decision of the service your going to use. Never just look at one company or product and decide they must be the chosen ones because you have a good feeling towards them. That would be a big mistake.
Seeing as how repair credit help services are all around us, please understand however, they are not all equal. When deciding which product or service is right for you, make certain you fully understand all aspects of your situation and what each offer pertains to that uniqueness.