How to Improve Your Credit Score

                  

Monitor your credit online through one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus: Experian.com, Equifax.com, and TransUnion.com. The federal government requires that all three allow everyone to see one free copy of their report each year.

If you want more consistent monitoring, including email alerts anytime your credit report changes or is viewed, you’ll need to pay $9.95 a month after a one-month free trial.

Know your credit score—anything below 620 makes you risky to landlords and loan companies.

If you see something on your credit that you can pay off, (like a forgotten utility) pay the bill immediately, especially if you’re planning to move. According to the law, once your bill is paid, the item must be removed from your credit report by the next billing cycle.

If you have false claims on your report, stay calm and follow these steps to get them off:

 

The easiest way to remove false claims is to use the online dispute function on any of the credit bureaus’ websites. Simply check the claim you are arguing and write a very brief description of the reason. You should get a response in 45 days or less.

 If the online dispute fails or you want to take it a step further, you can hire an attorney to fight the claim in court. If you win, the company will be fined $1,000 and might also need to pay punitive damages as well as any legal fees that are incurred.

Check all three major credit bureaus for errors and dispute each error with any report it appears on. Reports can vary by what information each bureau receives. Also, if there is an error, or if an old bill gets paid up, although one bureau may remove it from your report, the other two may not.

There are a few other things to be on the look out that can lower your score:

Don’t load up on credit cards that you do not need. Every time your credit is checked, your credit is lowered by five points.

If you are searching for the lowest price on a loan, do all your shopping within 45 days. Within that time frame, all inquiries made on you for the same purpose will be counted as a single inquiry, so your credit will only be lowered once.

Watch out for “impermissible pulls,” which is a pull of your information that you did not approve. This is illegal and if you see one on your report, immediately inform the credit bureaus.

Alright, so all your prior bills have been paid and you’ve cleared up any errors that were negatively impacting your score. If you are still hoping to raise your score further, there are a few things you can do:

Mortgages and installment loans count more heavily than credit cards, so be sure to pay them on time. Try to pay off credit cards until you only have two or three. However, do not consolidate your debt onto a few cards; this is because your score is affected by the amount you owe toward a certain limit. If you put all your credit on one or two cards, it could actually worsen your score.

Keeping tabs on your credit report can be a hassle, but credit can work for you, not just against you. You can get a better rate on a loan or be offered one sooner than others if you have a higher credit score. If you are consistently paying bills and maintaining low balances on a fixed number of accounts, your credit will thank you!