We will clean your credit up, no matter how bad it is. Bankruptcies, bad loans, judgments and liens – we can remove it all.

You’ve probably heard lines similar to this before. Maybe you heard it on the radio, maybe you saw a commercial on television, or maybe you saw an ad online or in the newspaper. Either way you were likely listening to half-truths or possibly even full-fledged lies. The truth is that these so-called credit repairing companies probably won’t repair your credit much (if any) and will likely charge hundreds to thousands of dollars for just about nothing.

Here’s the truth about credit repair. It’s not easy and it takes time and discipline. If you want your credit repaired then you should consider yourself the responsible party – after all, you were the one who messed it up in the first place, so why shouldn’t you be the one who has to work on fixing it? Let me tell you how.

Get Yourself A Copy of Your Credit Report

Go to annualcreditreport.com and get yourself a copy of your credit report from one of the three credit reporting agencies (or all of them if you want) for free. In the increasingly electronic age that we’re living in I’d recommend checking your credit report as often as possible so you can avoid disasters such as identity theft and incorrect reporting. If you stagger the reports you get from annualcreditreport.com then you can check your report every four months.

Make Sure You Know What’s On Your Credit Report

You didn’t think that you were done after getting a copy of your credit report did you? Now that you’ve gotten yourself a copy of your credit report it’s time to study it. What’s on it? Make sure that everything listed is something that you recognize. For example if there is a home loan on your credit report but you don’t own a home (and never have for that matter) then there’s something seriously wrong. So be sure to comb through your report and make sure nothing looks out of the ordinary.

Get Your Spending Under Control and Pay Down Your Debt

You will likely never improve your credit score unless you can manage to get your spending habits under control and start to pay down your debt – especially credit card debt. Once you start to pay down any high debt levels you might have you will start to see your credit score increase.

A two-fold parting question for you: how is your credit and have you had any experience with credit repair agencies? I’d love some feedback on the matter.