A Novice's Guide to Avoiding Credit Restoration Pitfalls

While you can repair your own credit, many people that attempt to do so fall into common traps. Their expectations are not realistic, they don't realize how much work is involved and they don't see the process through. We are going to look at these pitfalls and what you can do to avoid them.

Unrealistic Expectations

Largely thanks to advertising, many people believe that credit repair is fast and easy. While there are things you can do to raise your credit score quickly, you should understand that complete credit repair will take time. Your credit was not destroyed overnight. Likewise, you shouldn't expect it to be repaired in a single month.

Depending on how damaged that your credit is, you should allow for anywhere from six months to two years for credit repair. Those who have had serious credit issues - such as a repossession, foreclosure or bankruptcy should understand that credit restoration will take at least two years. If you lost a home to foreclosure, you should understand that mortgage companies will not consider giving you a new loan for at least 36 months.

Laziness

You can (and should) repair your credit yourself. You do need to understand that if you want to be successful, you will need to put a lot of work into it! You should be able to set aside time each week to work on your credit repair efforts. For best results, you will need to spend at least one hour a week. Many people think that they should be able to fix their credit in a single session. This just isn't the case. You will need to keep stellar records because you will need these records when you move to more advanced strategies.

Giving too soon

Most people don't realize how involved that credit repair can be. They think they can dispute the negative information on their credit file and somehow their credit report will be instantly transformed. The reality is that credit repair is a process. You will need to dispute items in your credit file at least once. Chances are it will take several rounds of disputes until you have exhausted the dispute process. You should wait a month or so between each round of disputes. For this reason, disputing alone can take months. Once you are done disputing, you will then need to move on to more advanced strategies.

By realizing how these three things can stand in your way of credit repair success, you can use your awareness to avoid falling into these traps.


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Vincent Polisi is the founder of LifeRebooted.org and CreditRepairCollege.com. To learn more about how to fix bad credit fast, please visit him on the web.