How can you improve your credit scores?

Step 1 - Order Your Credit Reports & Scores
The first step is to have a complete picture of your current credit situation by ordering your credit report and score for all three national credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. You should get your score from all three bureaus for two reasons. First, each bureau may have slightly different information about you depending on which companies have reported to them on your accounts. Second, many lenders, especially mortgage lenders, look at all three of your FICO scores to determine whether to grant credit – for everything from a car loan to a home loan to a credit card to a cell phone. Do not have a creditor pull your reports because you will lose points for a hard inquiry.

You can pull all three credit reports and scores for $1.00 at www.privacyguard.com. Please be sure to read terms and conditions of the Privacy Guard Agreement.

Step 2 - Verify the Data Being Reported
It is the consumer's responsibility to verify that the data being reported is accurate. Some examples to look for would be:

• Misspelled Names
  
• Wrong Addresses
  
• Incorrect Social Security Information
  
• Make sure that you recognize all the creditors being reported
  
• Make sure the negative items belong to you
  
• Signs of identity theft
  
• Check for unauthorized hard inquiries
  
• Make sure all credit card limits and balances are reported accurately
  
• Check the statute of limititations in your state
  
• If you have a positive account that is not being reported to all bureaus, call them up and ask them to report it
  

Step 3- Dispute the inaccurately reported information immediately
Contact your creditors or send letters of dispute to the credit bureaus to have errors on your credit report corrected. By law, the credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate your claim and make any appropriate updates.