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Britt Erica Tunick is an award winning financial journalist who has spent the past 17 years writing about virtually every aspect of finance. She has mastered the art of boiling down complicated financial topics for readers to understand. |
Your credit score can be improved with some attention and diligence. How to Improve A Poor Credit Score By Britt Erica Tunick Like it or not, there are certain scores in life you can’t get around from the SAT scores high school seniors must submit when applying to college, to the individual credit score every person has that will follow them throughout their life. But while some extra studying and retaking can quickly help raise an SAT score, raising an individual credit score isn’t quite as easy. Still, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The difficulty of raising an individual credit score comes down to the seriousness of whatever it is that is keeping the score low to begin with. If your credit score is low simply because you simply have no credit history, that is something that is easily remedied. The easiest way to establish an initial credit history is through a pre-paid credit card, where money is actually loaded on to the card in advance and is deducted as charges are made. These cards are typically used as a way of proving responsibility and are a stepping stone to getting a regular credit card. Another way to help establish an initial credit history is by taking out a store brand charge card or two. Since these accounts have much lower credit lines they tend to be far easier to get, yet they are helpful for establishing credit because they still report to the three major credit agencies. If your credit is low because of mistakes you’ve made in the past, such as unpaid bills that were handed over to collection agencies, improving your credit will be significantly more difficult and there is no quick fix. Anything reported to a collection agency will remain on your credit report for seven years even if you fix the underlying problem that led to the collection agency’s involvement in the first place. And while paying off a debt through a collection agency will stop the calls to you and your family, it will not remove the instance from your credit report. The best thing you can do is to avoid ever being put into collection to begin with by always paying your bills in full and on time. If it is too late for that, there are law firms and credit counselors who specialize in helping people consolidate debt and begin the long and complicated journey to repairing and rebuilding their credit. Pre-paid cards have also become a popular way for people who have messed up their credit histories to re-establish credit and prove that they are worthy of a second chance. |
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