Quick Tips
What is the best strategy for paying down my credit card balances?
First, get any credit cards that are past due current. Then pay down the cards that have the highest balance in comparison to their credit limits. You should also consider in the APRs associated with each card so you can pay down the cards with the highest APRs-which will leave more money to pay down all your cards.
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How quickly does paying down a credit card affect my score?
It often doesn’t take that long for balance decreases to have a positive impact on your score. However, before a credit card can have a positive affect on your scores two things need to happen:
1) the credit card company needs to report the balance decrease to the credit bureaus.
2) the credit bureaus need to update your credit report with the balance decrease.
Absence of a Credit Score
Not every credit file qualifies to receive a credit score. There are minimum scoring requirements to ensure that scores are delivered as accurate as possible. There are several reasons why credit score might not appear on a credit report, including:
- The consumer has not has any activity on open accounts in the past six months
- The consumer has insufficient credit history to calculate a score—new credit or not enough established credit. Generally, two years of credit history is needed to obtain a score
- The parameters of the file are too large—the file contains mote than 100 trade lines and inquiries combined
- Incomplete data was entered to access a report (e.g., generation code or middle initial required by credit bureau to provide a file and score)
- The consumer has been reported to the credit bureaus as having died
- The consumer reported being a victim of fraud
- The consumer has an additional unmerged credit file with any of the three credit reporting agencies
- Incomplete residence history was entered to access a credit report (2-year minimum required)
Dispute Bad Credit
First step to disputing bad credit is to request a copy of your credit report. Once you have a copy of your credit report look for errors, inaccurate items, or items that are misleading. Errors usually occur when a company does not have adequate information on an individual and reports to the credit bureaus using only a name. When you dispute bad credit the credit bureau has 30 days by law to verify the information. If the information cannot be verified it will be deleted.
Note that whether the account is "really" yours or not has no bearing on their responsibility to verify it. If it cannot be verified, it must be deleted.