Free 15 Step Credit Repair Guide

Basic Credit Repair Strategy

The basic strategy to repairing your credit is as follows:

1. Get and review your credit report.
2. Analyze your report.
3. Make a list of all items you consider to be questionable or negative. Clearly identify each item in your report that you dispute, explain why you dispute the information,
4. Write a dispute letter bureaus.
5. Send the letter to the credit bureaus. Make sure you send it registered or certified mail.
6. Document your efforts.Record when you sent your letters, and the results.
7. Wait for the bureaus to investigate your claims.
8. Analyze the results.
9. Repeat.
10. Specialized techniquesWas the item deleted or changed to your satisfaction? You may continue steps 1, 2 and 3 above until you feel the dispute is settled satisfactorily. Remember, there is no charge for a reinvestigation. If you don’t get the results you want, dispute the listing again.
11. Free Sample Letters
12. What if a removed negative item comes back on my credit report?
13. What if I get stuck and need help?
14. Eduardo's Results
15. Feeling overwhelmed by this process and think you don't have the time? You do!

That's all there is to it. Seems easy enough but you must have patience, because the credit bureaus are not always very cooperative. They make their money by providing credit reports to lenders not by fixing bad information in their databases.

1. Get your credit report.

To obtain free copies of your report, please see Getting and reading your credit report.Please note: when you get a free report, you are not going to see your credit score, which is a crucial tool in getting your credit in shape. Here is a comparison chart of online credit score purchase options.

Eduardo ordered his credit report and scores from Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax for $34.95. Note: this service also came with a credit report monitoring service which he used during his credit repair efforts to monitor his progress.

2. Analyze your credit report.

You can analyze your credit as outlined in "Decoding Your Report".

Once paying for his credit reports & scores online, Eduardo download his report and saved it to his computer. Eduardo used the free credit report analyzer which came with his credit report order to figure out which items on his report were damaging. After reviewing his credit reports, printed out his report then highlighted everything he saw as a negative listing along with what the computer analysis pointed out. Most of them were medical collections, and were easy to spot. However, he does notice that one of the bureaus is reporting him as late on a payment to one of his credit cards, and he knows he paid it on time.

In addition, Edouardo has read that as part of the new FACTA legislation to protect consumers from identity theft, he was supposed to have been notified of the negative mark. He is sure he was never notified.