Acknowledging that you do have bad credit is the first step towards repair. You have already taken that step, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Here are a few steps toward bad credit rating repair:

1. The biggest chunk of your credit score (or rating) depends on your payment history. This alone accounts for 35%. From here onwards, determine to pay your bills on time, if it means juggling them (using one account to pay another). In a few months, you will see an improvement.

2. If you don’t have open credit accounts, whether through bankruptcy or accounts getting closed, you need to open new accounts as soon as you possibly can. The easiest credit to get is secured type. This means depositing a sum of money ($500 or more), and then using that as collateral to get a line of credit. Start using it and pay back in full. You also take out a cash advance on that account and open another new account (known as piggy-backing). Just be sure that you can make the payments to avoid more credit problems.

3. Keep your balances low. 30% of your score is calculated on this. Keep your balances at 30% of your limit. Just by doing this you could see an almost immediate raise in your score. Just paying your bills on time (see No.1 above) and keeping your balances low could give your credit score a big boost.

4. Do NOT close your open accounts, even if you have had late payments. Why? Because those payments are helping you establish history. Some questionable credit repair companies will often dispute (or advice you to do so) all your accounts, including the good ones. This is a mistake. Once you dispute an account, it comes off your file until verified. Good accounts have less chance of getting verified. You could end with bad accounts getting back and good ones staying off! Length of credit history accounts for 15% of your score – another reason for keeping open accounts.

5. Avoid opening too many new accounts. Too many new accounts will increase the number of recent enquiries on your report, which dings your credit. Also, opening too many new credit accounts indicates higher risk.

6. Reduce your debt to manageable levels. Some credit “experts” advice first paying off high interest accounts. This is not necessarily the best way to go. More recent (less than two years old) bad accounts hurt your credit most. Deal with the more recent bad accounts first. And pay off the balances starting from the smallest and working upwards. Why? Well, if you start with the bigger balances, you might have problems somewhere in the middle, therefore ruining all your hard work.

7. Negotiate for removal of bad information. Yes, you can negotiate removal of negative items from your credit file as part of the deal. If the creditor or debt collector is reluctant is reluctant to remove your negative information altogether, you can request “re-aging” which simply means making the current month your first payment month, therefore not showing late payments. This subject could fill a book on its own.

Find out how to negotiate for removal of bad credit information plus credit repair tricks and strategies. Check out Credit Repair Bible now.

Related posts:

1. Quick Credit Repair: Simple Steps for Raising Your Credit Score
2. Credit Repair, Remove Negative Items: Can It Be Done?
3. How to Rebuild Your Credit and Raise Your Credit Score Fast
4. Fix Your Credit Report: Avoid These Mistakes
5. How to Improve Your Credit Score