 TITLE: How to Repair Your Credit CONTENT: Learning what impacts your credit scores and what's allowed on your credit report are important first steps to repairing your own credit.\n### Learn What Affects Your Scores\nWhile there are many credit scoring models, similar factors can impact all your scores. In order of importance, these are:\n*   **Payment history**: This includes whether you've paid your bills on time, defaulted on accounts or had accounts sent to collections. Public records, such as bankruptcies, also fall under the payment history category. A long history of on-time payments is best for your scores.\n*   **Credit usage**: If you're currently using a large portion of your available credit limits, that could hurt your scores. Having low credit usage, or credit utilization rate, is best.\n*   **Credit mix**: Experience managing different types of credit accounts, such as installment loans (including mortgages, car loans and student loans) and revolving credit accounts (including credit cards and credit lines), is usually better for your scores than having experience with only one type of account.\n*   **Age of accounts**: Managing credit over a long period can help improve your scores. The age of your oldest account and the average age of all your accounts can affect your scores.\n*   **Recent applications**: Credit applications can lead to hard inquiries, which may temporarily knock your credit scores down a few points. Multiple hard inquiries can increase the impact, although there's leeway for consumers who are rate shopping for certain types of loans.\nKnowing these factors can help you focus your efforts on paying your bills on time, not using too much available credit and only applying for new credit when you really need it as you try to improve your scores.\nWhen you're trying to repair your credit, usually you're also looking for derogatory marks (in other words, negative information) that are negatively impacting your scores. This can include:\n*   Late payments\n*   High balances\n*   Defaulted accounts\n*   Collections accounts\n*   Charge-offs\n*   Repossessions\n*   Foreclosures\n*   Bankruptcies\nOnce you spot a derogatory mark, you'll need to determine whether it's information you should dispute or it's accurate and belongs on your report. Credit bureaus such as Experian monitor reports closely to ensure information is deleted within the time frames specified by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You should, however, dispute any information you believe is inaccurate.\n### Follow These Three Steps\nOnce you've got a grasp of how credit scoring and reporting work, here are three steps you can take to repair your credit.\n1.  **Check your credit reports.** You can request a free copy of your credit report from each of the three bureaus once every 12 months at AnnualCreditReport.com. You can also review your Experian credit report for free at any time by creating an account. Additionally, Experian offers a free FICO® Score☉ based on your credit report, which you can use to monitor changes in your score.\n2.  **Dispute negative information that you believe shouldn't be on your report.** You can file the dispute online, by mail or over the phone.\n3.  **Review your credit reports regularly for signs of fraud or incorrect information.** Continue to monitor your credit reports to make sure there are no signs of identity theft resulting in inaccurate information and that no new errors appear.\nWhen you're working to repair your credit, keep in mind that disputed items only need to be removed or updated if they are:\n*   **Inaccurate.** This includes accounts that aren't yours or late payment marks when you paid the bill on time.\n*   **Untimely.** Accounts or information that should have been removed from your credit reports because of their age.\nAfter you file a dispute, the credit bureau must forward it, along with any documentation you provide, to the source of the information. The source, usually a lender, must then review your dispute and either verify, update or delete the item you're disputing. END