Personal Credit:

Improve Your Credit - There's No Time Like the Present!

If your credit isn't want you want it to be, there's no time like the present to take a quick look. Your FICO Scores are your credit rating. They are based on five general categories: payment history 35%, amounts owed 30%, length of credit history 15%, new credit 10% and types of credit used 10%. Scores range from 340-850. The higher your score, the better your interest rate. 11% of the population has a score of 800 or better. 29% has 750-799, 20% has            700-749 and 16% has 650-699 and so on.

Step 1 - Get your credit report. You can get a free report from www.FreeCreditReport.com.

Step 2 - Look for errors and credit that may not be yours.

Step 3 - Work towards removing erroneous or incorrect information.

Step 4 - Work to improve your credit if necessary. There are a number of sites that help you to interpret your report and suggest how you might clean up your score. If this is necessary, get started right away. Suze Orman offers a FICO Kit that can be helpful to those looking to learn more (see Quick Links above). It can be quite helpful for those that don't need serious credit repair. Another good site is www.myfico.com

Step 5 - If needed contact a credit repair company. Veracity (www.veracitycredit.com) is a reputable credit repair company that may be of some help. While their credit repair services improve and correct your credit reports and improve your credit score, the end goal is not a number, but a quest for credit power.

Most lenders use a combined score from the three major credit reporting agencies. If you pay your bills one time and watch your credit limits (strive to use less than 50% of your available credit), you should have no worries. If you have trouble getting those pesky bills in the mailbox on time, consider automating your bill paying through direct debit or online bill paying services. Most banks offer them and it's very easy to control. Also consider overdraft protection.