Credit Repair

Some of the phony credit repair places blitz credit bureaus with disputes about anything and everything. In the past, this might have been temporarily effective if the credit bureaus removed the disputed items while they investigated. These days, though, the bad stuff typically stays on your file during the investigation, so you don’t even get [...]

One of the fastest ways to boost a score is to lower your debt utilization ratio-the difference between the amount of revolving credit that’s available to you and the amount that you’re using.
One simple way to improve your ratio is to redistribute your debt. If you have a big balance on one card, for [...]

Rapid rescoring services came about because too many people were losing loans or paying too much interest because of credit bureau inaccuracies. Before you get excited, though, you should learn what these services can and can’t do:
• They can’t deal with you directly as a consumer-Rapid rescoring is typically offered by small credit-reporting agencies, [...]

Legally, you owe a debt until it’s paid, settled, or wiped out in bankruptcy. Some people erroneously believe that their obligation ends when a creditor charges off the debt. But a charge-off is essentially just an accounting term. The creditor can continue trying to collect or sell the debt to a collection agency, which can [...]

Responsible credit users don’t apply for credit they don’t need. They also try to pace their credit requests, so that they’re not opening a bunch of accounts in a short period of time.
Although your first few credit accounts serve to build and improve your credit history, there typically comes a point when each subsequent [...]

If your goal is to improve your credit score, don’t close any of your current accounts. Closing credit cards and other revolving accounts can never help your score, and it might actually hurt it. Shutting down accounts reduces your total available credit, and that makes your balances loom larger. That narrowing of the gap between [...]