I received a question about a recent blog entry and wanted to answer it in more detail here. Do I really need to hire someone else to repair my credit? Can’t I do it myself?
The short answer is ‘Yes, you can do it yourself’. Technically, everything that a credit repair service provider does is something that you could do yourself. Here are a few of the actions that most companies will undertake:
- order a credit report from all 3 agencies
- check for obvious errors
- review information with the client for accuracy
- contact credit bureaus to correct errors
So far, nothing there that you can’t do yourself. Here are some more items that some credit repair providers might also do:
- contact individual creditors to get negative items removed/corrected
- search for errors on the part of creditors in reporting
- search for errors on the part of the agencies in record keeping or reporting
- follow-up with creditors and agencies to get errors corrected
Still, nothing you can’t do yourself. However, at this point, it starts to get a little easier to see why you might want an expert helping.
Will you be able to identify errors?
Do you have the experience to read a credit report and tell whether an error is likely on the creditors side or the agencies side?
Are you familiar with the rules that govern the reporting of credit information? For the creditor? For the Bureau?
Remember: There are two main things that impact your credit score – positives and negatives.
Negatives are late payments, missed payments, collections, bankruptcies and judgements – really, anything that was reported that has a Negative impact on your credit score.
Positives are things like paying on time, multiple credit sources, length of time you have had particular credit, the amount of credit used versus credit available. These all have a positive impact on your credit score and are not just the absence of ‘negatives’.
Help yourself to a higher Credit Score by focusing on improving the things you can control and leave the rest to others. The people most successful at improving their credit score, and seeing results the fastest, work on the ‘positives’ themselves and get help for the ‘negatives’.
You actively work on and manage:
- Positive items on your credit report
- Reducing your debt
- Paying your current and future bills on time
- Setting a budget and sticking to it
- Invest in a debt reduction system, if necessary
Hire a Credit Repair Service:
- Remove Negatives from your credit report
- Ensure Permanent Removal – this one is important
- Handle all the paperwork with the bureaus
- Manage any correspondence with creditors
- Address all ‘negatives’ not just obvious problems
- Use expertise to get more progress than you could alone
If you only remove the negatives….your credit score will improve.
If you only improve the positives….your credit score will improve.
If you do both, you’ll get the greatest improvement in the quickest time possible.
There are several other benefits to the ‘you handle the positives, let them handle the negatives’ approach to credit score improvement.
- creating and maintaining a budget is personal and done best by you; plus you can work on continuous improvement and get continuous benefits
- hiring someone to work the positives means ‘letting someone else touch or control your money’ – bad idea; you work the positives, you control the money
- you save a huge amount of time — working with the bureaus alone takes a lot of time, even if you are good at it, and it must be done repeatedly. HUGE time savings for you.
- Working on debt reduction yourself, means money in your pocket at the same time you are improving your credit score.
- Get good at working the positives – using your money better, retiring debt, budgeting – these skills translate into more money and last a long time
