clean credit report up

How Do I Clean Up My Credit?

An Actual Case Study For A Real Client- Part 2

by Vincent Polisi on February 25, 2010

In the prior post, I began responding to the questions asked by one of our readers at FinanceTheDream.com. The questions Candace asked were:

1.    What happens to the credit score when debt validation letters and the pay for delete process is used?
2.    When derogatory items are removed, does your credit score go up or down?
3.    When derogatory items are removed, does it show that I have a shorter time length of credit history?
4.    Can I get paid collection accounts removed?
5.    How Do I get the account numbers from the collection agency without admitting the debt?
6.    How long will it take for my score to improve?

The first two questions were answered in the prior post on how to clean up your credit report. In this post, we will continue to address, in detail, her additional questions so you too can understand how to clean up your credit report.

Debt Resolution

Q:   When derogatory items are removed, does it show that I have a shorter time length of credit history?

A:   There are three answers to this question and they are yes, no and it depends. Great answers, huh? Everything clear as mud? Let’s clear things up. Ok, when derogatory items are removed, it may show that you have a shorter time length of credit history IF, and IF being the operative word here, IF the items removed are the oldest and longest reporting accounts on your credit report AND there are no other accounts of the same age. If the accounts that got removed through debt resolution practices were not the oldest accounts, then the answer is no, it will not show that you have a shorter time length of credit history.

Even if the accounts are the oldest on the credit history, if they are showing as charge-offs or collections, you still want to get them removed because they certainly are not helping your credit report, credit score or overall credit profile from an underwriting perspective.

When you have to worry about accounts being removed that are the oldest is when the account that is removed or disappears is the oldest and is a positively reporting account. This is why you absolutely have to have Equifax Credit Watch Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring when working on credit restoration. Believe it or not, you can actually have positively reporting accounts drop off and not report. This is devastating to your score and can really impede your ability to qualify for a loan, get a job, etc. Equifax Credit Watch Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring allows you to see what is and is NOT being reported in real time. This is an essential element in credit restoration because it lets you know what to attack. When used in conjunction with
Equifax Score Watch you have live metrics so you can see what is being reported, be immediately alerted to changes in your credit report, your credit score and run simulations that will tell you what will happen if you get a derogatory item removed, pay it off, etc. You can also run simulations that will show your credit score over a period of time so you can see the impact of simply continuing to pay your bills on time or paying them off early. If you are serious about credit restoration, you absolutely have to have Equifax Credit Watch Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring and Equifax Score Watch. It is what the pros use and you should too!

Q: Can I get paid collection accounts removed?

A: The answer? Yes, of course. Anything, whether positive or negative, that is on your credit report can be removed. Some are infinitely more challenging than others, like public records (bankruptcy, foreclosure, judgments, tax liens) but a paid collection account can be removed. The approaches to this are through the dispute and debt validation processes since this isn’t really a debt resolution issue since technically, there is no debt to resolve any longer. If you have watched our video on how to develop a comprehensive plan to credit repair, you already know that you have to begin with the end in mind and there is a certain chronology in way you prioritize each aspect of credit restoration, debt resolution, etc. So, before I would personally waste time on getting a paid collection deleted, I would run it through Equifax Score Watch and determine how much it would impact the score. Likewise, if there are other things that need to be addressed, I would run those through Equifax Score Watch as well. Once that is complete, you know the credit score impact of each item and can prioritize your efforts. Typically, debt resolution through dispute, debt validation and pay for delete of unpaid charge-offs and collections will yield a higher credit score faster than eliminating an old paid collection account. Having said this, Equifax is constantly tweaking the credit scoring matrix and unless you run it through Equifax Score Watch you will not know the actual impact based on your individual credit report.

To see the answers to:

  • How Do I get the account numbers from the collection agency without admitting the debt?
  • How long will it take for my score to improve?

please view our next post:

How Do I Clean Up My Credit-Part 3

Additionally, if you have any questions or comments, please use the comment box below.

By the way, if you are looking for affordable credit repair, consider enrolling in Credit Repair College.  We will take you everything you need to know to take control of your credit and more! Join us if your ultimate goal is clean credit!

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How to Clean Up Your Credit Report

by Vincent Polisi on October 6, 2009

The big question we often get asked is, “How do I clean up my credit report?” The most important strategy in any credit restoration or credit repair program or plan is to begin by developing a comprehensive plan to fix your credit report.

There is no quick fix credit report repair solution despite what you may be told and sold. Credit restoration and credit repair require many different strategies and techniques based on what your particular situation is. So, to begin, develop a comprehensive plan to clean up your credit report. It should be a step by step plan with the ultimate goal being clean credit.

Before you can do that, you need to understand what type of credit information you are dealing with. Start by getting copies of your credit report from all three credit repositories, Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. Then, review the credit information that is being reported for accuracy. This is a critical first step for those wanting to know how to fix credit.

Most credit reports contain inaccurate items so to begin to clean up the credit report, you want to immediately target the truly inaccurate items that you can prove through documentation to be inaccurate credit information.

A good way to get some forward momentum towards credit repair and credit restoration is to immediately work on items that are inaccurate that you know you can get corrected.

After reviewing the credit information that is being reported, the next step in a comprehensive credit repair and credit restoration plan to help super charge cleaning up your credit report is to begin generating new positive good credit. This takes into consideration a long term view in the credit repair and credit restoration processes because once the new accounts are created, it will take some aging or what lenders call seasoning of the accounts before the true benefit is realized.

In other words, you will need a track record of paying these new accounts on time so that you can get this new positive credit information reporting and reflecting in the score. This is an integral part in a comprehensive credit restoration and credit repair plan to help fix your credit report and it needs to be initiated as quickly as possible so the aging or seasoning process can begin.
While you are working to clean up your credit report with other strategies, this strategy is slowly but surely helping fix your credit report and score, month after month, through on time payments.

The next step to clean your credit report up is to identify all of the derogatory credit information that is accurate. In other words, these were the things that you legitimately did not pay. As you undoubtedly have seen from the myriad of credit restoration and credit repair companies that are all over the Internet, disputing legitimate derogatory credit information is the number one technique that companies employ on your behalf to fix credit report items listed as derogatory.

They do this because it is the only thing that a company can legitimately do on your behalf to help clean up credit report items that are derogatory. Some may argue that a company can negotiate lower settlements but this is not part of a credit repair or credit restoration plan because it does not positively impact your credit score or help fix credit report issues.

It is part of debt elimination plan, not a credit repair or credit restoration plan. In fact, in many cases, it is actually detrimental in your effort to clean up your credit report because many lenders will actually annotate the account to the effect that an amount less than agreed or borrowed was accepted as settlement for the debt.

That isn’t credit repair or credit restoration. You may have saved some money on the reduced amount but you didn’t fix your credit report and oftentimes the new derogatory credit information can negatively impact your credit repair and credit restoration efforts by lowering your score or influencing an underwriter to make a judgment call to decline your loan application.

So, once you have identified all of the legitimate derogatory credit information, systematically begin the dispute process. Stay tuned, in our next post in this series, we will cover the myriad of ways to legally get legitimate derogatory credit information removed from your credit report. This is one of the best, least expensive and fastest ways to clean up your credit report.

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