Get Your One Time Credit Report For Free!
You should get your one time credit report for free each year and take some time to look it over for erroneous and old information. Continue reading to learn how as this will also help clean bad credit.
All 3 credit bureaus have to send you a report for free each year if you request it. There are 3 ways to get this, download a form, fill it out and mail it in, call by phone or request it online, of these requesting online is the easiest way to get your one time credit report. Go to AnualCreditReport.com. The one drawback is this credit report will not include your FICO score; however it does include all of the information that makes up your score.
If you don’t know your score and want that also you can still get a one time credit report by signing up for a free trial basis offered by many different sites. You can get your free score and report this way.
Now that you have your report let’s look at some quick fixes to improve your credit using your one time credit report.
• Pay down credit cards; paying down account balances is important and paying down credit cards have a lot of effect on your credit. Also use your cards lightly; heavy use of your cards will hurt your score even if you pay down the balance each month.
• Check limits listed on your one time credit report; if these are lower then your actual limit most card issuers will update this quickly if you make them aware of it. Also if you have old cards you are not using a lot of issuers will stop updating to the bureaus so go ahead and use that card occasionally.
• If you have been a good customer; a creditor may be willing to erase that single or occasional late payment.
• Search your one time credit report for errors. Late payments, charge offs, collections, anything that is not yours. Also negative items older then 7 years (ten for a bankruptcy) as these should have automatically been taken off.
Send these with explanations to the credit bureaus to be removed.
Some common mistakes; don’t ask for lower credit lines, this reduces debt to credit ratio. Don’t consolidate accounts; it is better to have smaller balances on a few cards then a big balance on one. Don’t apply for new credit if you already have plenty.
Now that you know what to do with your report and how to use it to improve your credit score it is time to act and get your one time credit report now.
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