Credit: How To Clean Up Your Credit Report

Now that you have your Credit report chances are that there are accounts on there that are considered negative accounts. these negative accounts are the ones that you either paid late or didn't pay at all and they are the ones that are hurting your credit score. There are some things that you need to know about these negative accounts. the first thing to do is to make sure that those negative accounts are actually yours. as I am sure you all know we are living in the times where identity theft and credit fraud are practically a way of life. it is not uncommon for people to have negative accounts on their credit reports for purchases that they never made or for lines of credit that they never took out. Both the credit reporting agencies and the United States Congress know this to be a fact and that is why legislative measures have been taken to give debtors a way to dispute these invalid debts. the first way is to contact the creditor directly. If you can convince them that you did not open that particular account you can get them to stop reporting that account as delinquent. If that doesn't work then you can file a dispute directly with the credit reporting agency. When you do this the credit reporting agency will then force the creditor to validate the debt. After investigating your claims the credit reporting agency will then take action. If you do not have proof that you did not open the account then it will be difficult to get invalid debt off of your credit report, but if you can prove that you did not open the account then getting the delinquent account off of your report will only take a little effort. That is a brief description of how to go about getting an account that you did not open off of your credit report. now we will talk about the accounts that you did open. there is not much you can do about negative accounts on your report that you did open. In this case you have one of two options. the first option is to pay the debt. In most instances you will not have to pay the full balance of the debt. You can either call the creditor and negotiate a settlement directly or you can work with one of those debt consolidation companies and see what they can do for you. The thing to understand about doing this is that the account will not automatically come off of your credit report upon being paid. the negative mark will stay on the report for another seven years after the payment is made. the only thing that you can do is that you can request that the account be marked as paid in full if you paid the full balance or you can ask that the account be marked as settled in full if you took a settlement. I know that this option is not all that attractive because let's be honest if you were planning to pay the debt chances are that you have paid it in the first place. however if you are trying to get credit for anything in the near future this may be a necessary step that you have to take. If you are not planning on making that a major purchase that will require you to take out a loan or to utilize any credit and you just want to clean up your credit report so that you have options in the future there is another way. It is a little known fact that most old accounts must be taken off of your credit report seven years after the date that the account first became delinquent. Meaning the last time you paid. So check your credit report and call your creditors. If there are any delinquent accounts that are close to that seven year deadline then there is no point in paying those off. Actually you lose by paying them off because as I said earlier when you pay the debt off you are actually renewing the debt which allows the creditor to keep reporting it to the credit agencies for another seven years. So if you do have some negative accounts that are close to that threshold the best thing to do is wait it out and then when the seven years is up dispute the debt with the credit reporting agency on the grounds that the debt is outdated and get it taken off of your report. the key point to understand about this tactic is that the older the debt is the less the affect it has on your credit score. So rather than paying off a debt that is basically about to expire anyway you can use that money to start rebuilding your credit. Credit How To Clean Up Your Credit Report  [l]