Never Too Late to Fix Your Credit

It is so important to do a little health check on your finances at the end of each year. Summer is actually an even better time. It is equally important for people who have had a major change in their life such as a divorce, or a marriage. For me, this year marks a year of "starting over." There is so much debt that I have that is from the mere restructuring of my life. I just had no idea how a life change could affect you.

There are a few things you can do in the way of credit repair, such as pulling your credit reports and examining them carefully. Check the items that may be wrongly listed on your credit report, and try to make amends to some that you in truth have defaulted on or have forgotten about. You can file a credit dispute if you find something that does not seem quite right, such as a debt of a person with a similar name, or a credit inquiry that you did not authorize.

While it does take seven years to fix credit in most cases, as some negative marks hang on that long, there are a number of ways that you can make major improvements in spite of that. Pay all current bills on time, of course, to create a new track record. Creditors may give you a break if you made mistakes in the past but your recent history is good. Do not give up hope. You can do it, even if it takes consolidating or cutting back. However, most bad credit is generating with missing payments for reasons of mismanagement rather than not having the funds.

Not everyone was blessed with clean credit, but with some diligence, you can get yourself a lot closer to the reality of complete credit repair.