As a general rule, most lenders will be comfortable extending credit to you at a competitive rate if your score is above 660. The best rates are offered with a score above 750. Of course there are other factors they consider, but your credit score is the primary one.

To achieve this level of creditworthiness, there are several methods you can use. The first and most important one is to dispute negative items that you feel are inaccurate, unverifiable, or wrong in any way.

There are two ways to approach the negative entry removal process. You can do it by yourself, or hire a competent and reputable credit repair company, preferably a law firm, who knows laws regarding credit reporting.

Examples of items that can be removed are:

• Items older than 2 years
• Discharged bankruptcies
• Charge-offs
• Inquiries
• Repossessions
• Late payments
• Late accounts now paid off

Some more damaging negative marks will be more difficult to remove, but still possible:

• Accounts that are currently past due
• Recent Bankruptcies
• Judgments
• IRS or State Tax Liens
• Current collection accounts

First, you need to get your credit report. Especially convenient and thorough are the 3-in-1 credit reports that combine all 3 reporting agencies’ reports into 1 easy-to-analyze report.

Dispute Negative and Erroneous Items

After getting your credit report in hand, you need to scour it for inaccurate items. Given the statistics, you probably have several items that are wrong in some way, shape or form.

Statistics show that the most effective way to clean up your credit report is to dispute negative items that are inaccurate, misleading or unverifiable.

With patience and persistence, you can remove negative and inaccurate marks on your credit report. However, this is a tedious process and can involve a lot of letter writing, followup work and knowledge of your rights under the FCRA. This is where a knowlegdeable credit repair law firm can help.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act

The Fair Credit Reporting Act of 2002 requires the credit reporting agencies to follow a strict set of rules when gathering information about your creditworthiness and when handling disputes from you or a credit repair agency. These rules put you on an even playing field when it comes to fixing your credit.

The FCRA explicitly gives you the right to dispute items on your credit report.

There is nothing illegal about challenging items on your report. Credit report repair is sort of like pleading “not guilty” in a court of law.

What to Do After You’ve Found Inaccurate Items

Once you’ve identified items you want to dispute, use these effective “do-it-yourself” techniques to get your credit report as clean as possible in a short amount of time.

If you don’t think you have the time, energy to do it on your own, you can hire a reputable credit restoration companyto do this for you. We’ve done our homework and recommend a real law firm that specialized in credit repair law.

Lexington Law Firmis very successful in repairing and restoring credit and has many thousand of satified customers. You can stop living with bad credit and let a law firm remove your negative items from your credit report.

Be aware of credit repair scams out there that promise to “erase your bad credit” or “start over again with fresh credit.” These are from credit repair companies that use illegal ways to get you new credit, like applying for a new Social Security number or a new Tax ID.

Of course, they don’t tell you that it’s illegal, but you will get into big trouble. There ARE legitimate credit repair agencies out there, who have had a great deal of success in helping their clients restore their credit.

Lexington Law Firm offers a “couples discount” if you and your spouse enroll together.