Your credit score is something that can affect you in many different ways. Your credit can affect you if you are looking to make a major purchase like a house or a car. It can also affect you if you are trying to get a loan for your children’s education. Making major purchases like these are not decisions to be made lightly. There is a lot of money involved on both your side and the lenders. Lenders take many things into consideration when approving or declining your application for a sum of money.

Lenders weigh in many different things in their decisions on whether or not to lend you money. They typically take a look at your length of employment history along with your annual income. The biggest weighed factor they use is your FICO score. Your credit score is based upon your credit worthiness on how well you have paid your financial obligations in the past. With these three main factors the lenders will typically give you a yes or no answer. But, since your FICO score is usually the most weighed having the highest score possible is in your best interest. I’ll show you several steps that you can take to the credit bureau before you go to apply for a loan to make sure you have the highest score possible.

The first thing to do is to get your credit report from the three major bureaus so that you can get an idea as to what is exactly on your credit report. There is usually a small fee associated to check credit score

With this credit bureau but it is worth the extra fee for this as well.

The three major credit bureau

TransUnion Experian Equifax

P.O. Box 1000                P.O Box 2002                   P.O. Box
Chester, PA 19022        Allen, TX 75013                 Atlanta, GA 30374
1-800-888-4213            1-888-397-3742                     1800-685-1111

www.transunion.com     www.experian.com             www.equifax.com

Using the credit bureau contact information that is listed above order your credit report. If this is the first time you have ordered it within this year or you have recently been denied credit then you can have them send you a free credit report from all the bureaus. Recommended but not necessary it would also be a good idea to bay the ten dollar or fewer fee to also order your FICO from each bureau when you order your report.

Once you have received your credit report you can then take a good look and see if there are any inaccuracies on it. Check your social security number and make sure it is correctly stated on each of them. Check your addresses because each ill have reported addresses that you have lived make sure they are accurate. Also check your negative and positive history to make sure that each is reporting balances, amounts, and payments made on time correctly.

Once you have determined if there are ay basic inaccuracies on these credit reports then you need to then write a letter to the corresponding company and write explanation on why you think they are reporting inaccurately. The credit companies will then initiate what they call a dispute inquiry with the credit company that you say is reporting inaccurately and then will send you the results usually within 30-45 detailing you there findings.

There are several things that you can benefit from here with them doing the investigation. Everyone has at least one negative on their credit report and a lot of times they have been there for years since negative inquires can report up to 7 years. With all the recent turmoil in the financial industry and all the new mergers and acquisitions companies are being bought up left and right. Since it is mandated by federal law that the credit bureaus report back wit in that 30-45 day window about their findings if the company they are asking to verify the information with is no longer viable have no records of you or are not responding to the credit bureaus request at all then they must delete that record off your credit history. This benefits you so inquire about all of your negative items that you find. You may get lucky and have them removed if they are unable to verify the information. This usually works for a good 20 % of the negatives you have on your report. So it can only help you rebuild credit that much quicker.

Also when checking your credit report from the credit bureaus you want to take a look at your inquiries. Each inquiry that you have on your credit report stays on there for up to two years. If you have some on there that you do not  recognize or ones that are about to come off when you write your letter to the credit bureau you can ask them to remove those older or inaccurate request inquiry from your report which will also lift up your credit score.

Another thing that credit card companies or banks like to report is the credit limit that they extended to you. I have found on my own that some of these credit card companies also report if you have ever gone over your balance. So let’s say my credit limit is 100 dollars and I had forgotten about a recent gas purchase that I had but on there and that charge was 20 dollars and I went and bought something I really didn’t need for 90 dollars. When that credit charge for my gas finally comes through ill be above my credit limit by 10 dollars. The credit companies like this of course because then they tack on another 20 dollars or more because I went over my limit. So now my credit card bill comes and I’m at 130 dollars when they report it to the credit bureau it will show that my high credit is now 130 but my limit is 100 this can have a big negative effect on my credit score. My FICO will go down because those numbers do not match. Now you can ask the credit Bureaus to dispute this and sometimes it comes back to match your limit other times you may have to call the credit card companies directly to have them resend it to them. I do find though if you call and ask most credit companies they are willing to work with you. Then the next time you pull your credit score you will find that it has gone up.

If you take my advice and do some of these things prior to any major purchases you will be in a better negotiating position for yourself. In turn you can save hundreds or thousands of dollars in interest because of it. It does take some time and you have to take the imitative to bring these things to the credit bureaus attention. They will not go away for a long time if you don’t so get your reports and check them on a regular basis because it can only help you in the end.