| By :
Jim Kemish
Awesome Short Term Credit Repair Credit repair offers a variety of techniques that have the ability to improve your credit scores in a relatively short amount of time. There is a finite limit to the benefit that you can get with these short term techniques, as time itself does play an inexorable role in certain parts of the FICO scoring formula, but these short term results can still be awesome. The Amazing Power of Balances The biggest, fail-safe credit repair technique for fast score improvement is to reduce your credit card balances. This may seem a boring and well-worn idea, but it cannot be ignored as a little balance tune-up can add over 100 points. The FICO model puts so much weight on this factor that you cannot afford to ignore it. Here are some more angles on the matter. The Increments That Count For credit repair purposes you should only care about 20 percent increments of credit card utilization. You will get the biggest benefit by getting your balances under 20 percent of the available credit line. For example, if you have a 1,000 limit, get your balance below 200 dollars. Here are some important tips on balance timing. Be Careful With Your Timing Many people are taken off guard by bad timing. Nothing is more disappointing than accidentally sabotaging your credit repair progress in spite of all of your hard work. The most common timing failure occurs when someone uses a significant percentage of their card each month and pays the whole balance off when they get the bill. The reporting cycle of the creditor may not coincide with your payments and you may get reported with a maxed out card. Planning Your Moves in Advance If you are going to be applying for an important loan you want your scores to be at their best. The only sure-fire way to get your timing right is to reduce your balances 90 days in advance and keep them there. Do not shoot yourself in the foot by cutting it too close. Credit card companies can take up to 90 days to update the new balance with the bureaus. Help From Friends and Family Another great credit repair technique for quick score improvement is to get added to a friend or family member credit card as an authorized user. This is any easy process. You just need to find someone with excellent credit, no late payments and a relatively low balance on a card that has at least a couple years of history. The donor has no risk, and the full score benefit will pass right through to you as if it was your account. A Quick Dispute Trick Lastly, here is a more traditional credit repair method for a quick report clean up that is sure to give your scores a boost. It takes a little attention to detail, but it works great. By law, collectors are not allowed to report an account after they have sold it to another collector. This requirement is often ignored. Now is the time to clean them up. Up, Up and Away A massive percentage of collections on credit reports fall into this category, so it might be a credit repair gold mine. Just examine your credit report, pick out all of the duplicate collection accounts, choose the older of the two (or however many duplicates your find) and send dispute letters to the bureaus. Within 30 days these expired listing should be deleted and your reports should be looking lighter and your scores more buoyant. Copyright © 2010 James W. Kemish. All Content. All Rights Reserved.
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