10 Ways to Protect and Fix your Credit Rating

A lot of people have credit reports that show incorrect information. It's always a good idea to look up your report to make sure that everything on it is accurate. One of the first things you want to do if your struggling to improve your credit is make sure that your not unfairly dealing with negative marks on your report that shouldn't be there. 

Many consumers have low credit scores because they have not always been on time with their payments. If you're trying to protect or improve your credit score, you need to start being very careful to always get all of your payments in on it. If it helps, you can set up email or text alerts for when your payments are due so that you are less likely to miss them. 

If you're currently using a large portion of the credit that's available to you, it's going to negatively impact your credit score. You may be able to boost your credit score if you pay down some of your balances on your credit cards and pay off some other debts like your car loan. 

A lot of consumers make the mistake of closing old accounts that they're not using when they're trying to improve their credit score. In fact, having accounts that have been open a long time and are still in good standing is important to getting the best possible score. 

Looking at your credit report if you know that you have poor credit can give you valuable insights into why your credit is not doing so well. You need to find out the reasons for why your credit is bad to understand how you can approve it. Study your report and address the causes of any bad marks to effectively make improvements. 

If your credit has been so badly damaged that you have no credit accounts remaining and you can't be approved for an unsecured credit card, you can still get out a secured credit card to start making improvements. With a secured credit card, you will more easily be approved and can eventually graduate up to an unsecured card if you make payments on time for a while. Providers of secured credit cards will report positive information to the credit bureaus, so these cards can help you build credit. 

When you apply for credit, it can slightly lower your score. Only apply for credit when it's absolutely necessary to protect your credit rating. 

If you have a poor credit score, you may have accounts in collections. In many cases, you can negotiate pay offs so that you minimize the impact that these accounts have on your score. 

If you are married, you may want to separate credit accounts if you cannot trust your spouse to handle them wisely. 

One of the number one rules when it comes to protecting and improving your credit is to avoid bankruptcy. Bankruptcy will make for a highly negative mark on your credit report that will take a long time to recover from.