CREDIT

How to Fix Your Credit Score (Rating) Yourself

If you have poor credit, you can fix your credit score (score rating), but it can take time - even years. Because of the time involved, we prefer to talk about this process in terms of re-building or re-establishing your credit rather than simply “fixing your credit.”  Fixing sounds like a fast process, but aside from a couple exceptions, there is rarely anything quick about it.

How to “fix your credit” score fast

If the problem is a low credit score (or credit rating), caused by one of these three issues, then here is how you may be able to fix it quickly:

1. Reduce your credit card or line of credit balances to below 75% of your limit. If your low credit score is due to having maxed out credit cards or very high balances on your revolving debts (e.g. line of credit or credit cards), this can be fixed as quickly as you can bring your balances owing, down to below 75% of your credit limits (below 50% is even better and under 30% is best). About a month after you pay down your balances (and keep them there), your credit score should rebound as long as you don’t have any other negatives against you, like late payments.
2. Get collections removed from your credit report. If your credit score is being held back because of collections reporting on the public records section of your credit report, you may be able to revive your flagging credit score by paying off the collections and then requesting that those creditors remove their collection notations from your credit report. The type of collections that appear under the public records section of a credit report are things like unpaid utility bills, cable bills, telephone bills, cell phone bills, parking tickets and other debts that are in collections that weren’t originally a credit account.
3. Get old, negative information removed from your credit report. All negative information is supposed to fall off your credit report in 6 to 7 years depending on the province you live in. If there are any late payments or bad debts on your credit report that are older than this, you can ask to have them removed if the credit reporting company forgot to do it on their own.