How to Improve Your Credit Score
A staff member at Apartments.com has this credit “nightmare” to share:
“I thought I had landed the perfect apartment a few weeks ago. Spacious, well-lit, priced right—only problem was, about eight other people also thought it was ideal. In order to secure it, I needed to beat out the others in handing over the security deposit and passing a credit check. No problem, I thought—after all, I have very little debt, I pay all my bills on time, and I’ve a myriad of positive accounts in the past. So when the leasing agent shook his head at me and said, ‘No go, your credit wasn’t approved,’ I nearly fell out of my chair. As I left for home, one I would apparently be living in longer than expected, I wondered what could have happened. As it turned out, what happened was that I had missed the last electric bill at an address two years ago and a false claim—a blatant lie, I might add—from a previous landlord was sitting right squawk in the middle of the report. How could this happen, and what could I do about it? As it turns out, plenty. The first would have been to have kept an eye on my credit more carefully.”
You can follow these steps to avoid a similar fate:
- Monitor your credit online through one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus: Experian.com, Equifax.com, and TransUnion.com. The federal government requires that all three allow everyone to see one free copy of their report each year.
- If you want more consistent monitoring, including email alerts anytime your credit report changes or is viewed, you’ll need to pay $9.95 a month after a one-month free trial.
- Know your credit score—anything below 620 makes you risky to landlords and loan companies.
If you see something on your credit that you can pay off, (like a forgotten utility) pay the bill immediately, especially if you’re planning to move. According to the law, once your bill is paid, the item must be removed from your credit report by the next billing cycle.
If you have false claims on your report, stay calm and follow these steps to get them off:
- The easiest way to remove false claims is to use the online dispute function on any of the credit bureaus’ websites. Simply check the claim you are arguing and write a very brief description of the reason. You should get a response in 45 days or less.
- If the online dispute fails or you want to take it a step further, you can hire an attorney to fight the claim in court. If you win, the company will be fined $1,000 and might also need to pay punitive damages as well as any legal fees that are incurred.
- Check all three major credit bureaus for errors and dispute each error with any report it appears on. Reports can vary by what information each bureau receives. Also, if there is an error, or if an old bill gets paid up, although one bureau may remove it from your report, the other two may not.
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