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Strategies to Improve Your Fico Credit Score

By Louis Jeffries

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 19Nov2009 Word count: 633 Viewed: 512 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Improve Your Fico Credit Scores.

To get the best credit and interest rates you must have the best fico credit scores. These strategies will help you improve your fico credit scores and qualify for the best mortgage rates, auto loan rates and credit cards. Implement these to improve your credit score today.

Legal Credit Repair.

You have the right to legal credit repair. Whether you do it yourself or hire a professional company to assist you to remove items off of your report that are either inaccurate, improperly reporting or just do not meet the legal standards required for the credit reporting agencies to follow in reporting your credit history. So the number one strategy that many people use to improve their credit scores is to dispute those items. It is an effective method especially if the you stick to it. Unfortunately, the credit reporting agencies are not eager to help you. In some cases they have been known to arbitrarily dismiss many consumers disputes as frivolous and unfounded. This deters a lot of people. It has been said that as much as 20% of all disputes submitted to the credit reporting agencies are dismissed as frivolous. That means 80% are reviewed and worked on. Chances are if you dispute the inaccuracies one or 2 more rounds that they will be properly reviewed and handled.

Reduce Your Balances and or Increase Your Credit Limits.

A second strategy almost as effective as disputing negative items on your credit report is to reduce the balances on your credit cards and or increase your limits. The balanced owed on a credit card as a percentage of the high credit limit affects your credit score. They higher that ratio the lower your score. The lower the ratio the higher the score. This factor alone can account for one client who pays his bills on time every month with a credit score of 750 while another client who also pays their bills on time every month only has a 600 score. A 750 is considered very good credit while a 600 score is fair and the consumer would not qualify for most credit programs. If they do qualify they would pay a higher costs. On time payments account for 35% of your credit score. The available credit percentage factor represents 30% of your credit score. These two strategies alone can account for 65% of your total score.

Negotiate Old Collections and Late Payments.

The older negative items are on your report the less impact they have on your credit score. To improve your fico credit score you want to remove them completely from the report. If you pay them off or make payment arrangements you create a new activity that make the negative item a recent activity therefore effectively lowering or worsening your score. This is the exact opposite of what your intentions may be. To improve your score negotiate with the creditor to pay the item off at a reduced amount and for that they must complete remove the item from the credit bureau. You must get this in writing before you send them the money. Otherwise they have no incentive to follow through and remove the item.

Finally Strategies.

These three strategies will help you improve your credit score and allow you to qualify for the best credit at the lowest interest rates. Other strategies to remember is time. The longer an account is open the more positive points you add to your credit score. The type of accounts you have also affect your score. Mortgages and installment loans have the highest value, then major bank credit followed by national department store accounts. All other accounts, though they affect your credit score they have less of a positive impact. Use these strategies to improve your credit, get a mortgage, credit card or auto loan.

Louis J.

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