new to this, but need help rebuilding

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to rebuild my credit score, but I have no idea how to go about doing it... I don't know what to dispute or how to 'correctly' do it... What kind of information should I provide when disputing? How else can I rebuild my credit? I'm about to graduate from college... and I made some mistakes a few years ago... but everything is paid off and i don't have any open credit cards. like i said, i'm totally new to this and i'm trying to figure it out on my own....

[granny031350]

I started by reading the credit 101 thread.  Then it started to dawn on me about good will letter writing and pay in full for deletes with the baddies on my credit reports.  So I started to dispute the stuff I thought was wrong and then I wrote PLEASE letters to the rest.  And I continued to pay down my debt and always pay on time.  Those would be my suggestions.

Message Edited by granny031350 on 04-05-2008 07:34 AM

[Anonymous]

Hi marygenevieve, welcome to the forum! There's a wealth of information to help you on your credit journey.

granny gave you some excellent advice. Scoring 101 is an almost must. I'd suggest you read all you can in the "Credit Education" section of the black menu bar. Read, read, read....all you can on various credit cards and the experiences people have had with them.

Educating yourself is the best and surest way to build your credit...the CORRECT way. Without knowledge, and tackling a situation, you will make mistakes that you will later regret.

With that said, I strongly urge you to go to annualcreditreport.com and order all 3 of your credit reports for free.

After you have done that, and THOROUGHLY reviewed the credit reports contents and become comfortable with what it contains, come back here and look at the black menu bar for the section titled "Get a Credit Card". Educate yourself on what cards are available.

Applying for a secured cc offers great opportunities for someone with no credit to get a cc, and start building a good credit history. Joining a credit union, and applying for a card there is also an excellent way.

[Anonymous]

Hi mary, welcome to the forums.    There are times when you would NOT want to dispute.

Post your baddies in here and people will try to advise you what to do.

As you stated that every thing is paid.   You need to know that bad accounts even late payments will stay on your CR for 7 years.   Closed accounts will stay 10 years.

The length of history & CC UTIL and payments  count for 65% of your scores!

GW letters are sent for paid baddies. But you want to be careful what you want deleted as it could drop you history.

If you have not done so already  pull all 3 CR (FREE)     get your FICO scores    and then while correcting your CR    I would check out the CC thread and see what CC you might be able to get. Do not just start applying!!!  read what others are saying about what scores are usually needed AND always know what baddies might be on your CR.

Check out this thread     it has 3 threads in it  one is the abbrevs that we all use   another is important because it is the frequently requested thread....this one is full of info.

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=generalcredit&thread.id=38534

Please feel free to ask as many question as you need!!!!