If you're reading this, then it's because you wrecked your credit and want to know how to fix it. And I'm just a person sick of credit-repairing paysites when people can do it on their own. I boosted my credit score more than 250 points with no lawyers or advisors, so I'm going to tell you how to fix your credit report for free.
Disclaimer: If you decide to do this, you're on your own and I'm not liable for anything that happens. Every state is different, so your results may differ and the info here may not apply to everyone.
Get All Your Credit Reports From the Four Credit Bureaus
Yes, you read that correctly. Four. There are four major credit bureaus and not just the Trinity of Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. There is also a fourth, making them The Four Horsemen, with the lesser known bureau called Innovis. The first thing on how to fix your credit report, is getting all four of your credit reports from these bureaus. All of them give you one free annual report. So, if you used your one wish, unfortunately, you'll have to pay for it. But, you can get another one for free if you've been declined credit within the last 30 days. You can either do this and view the report online or have them snail mail to you. It doesn't matter. Our goal is to just get all of them so we can see what's on them.
Dispute All Creditors
Once you have all four of your credit reports, dispute everything on it. You got it. Whether you owe it or not, no matter the age of the debt, no matter its status; dispute it. When it comes to repairing your credit report, I can tell you, honesty will not get you anywhere. Collection agencies treat everyone like criminals. So, transparency may get you in more trouble than if you had just kept your mouth shut. Even if you know you owe it, today, you don't. Well, you do still owe it, but that's unrelated to what we are trying to achieve here.
Why are we doing this? If the creditor does not respond in 30 days, it's removed. Our goal here is to exorcise as many creditors from the report as possible. This increases the score quickly and narrows down the number of creditors. We're going to need this for Part 2 which is where 💩 starts getting real.
Rejoice At Your New Clean or Semi-Clean Credit Report
After the 30 days are up, the credit bureaus will remove the creditors who didn't respond. You will get a letter in the mail listing all of them. Great! You can effectively store that letter somewhere and forget about those guys. But what about the ones still on my report? I'll cover that in my upcoming post because that part isn't very cut and dry. So if you were able to get all your creditors removed from this step, congrats! But if not, stay tuned for my next post on how to fix your credit report.🦉