Maximizing Your Credit Repair

Successful credit repair involves a wide spectrum to cleaning up your credit report and restructuring your credit. Everything matters. But some aspects of credit repair are more potent than others. Among all of the techniques you can use to boost your scores, the proper management of credit cards is the most powerful. Proper use of your credit cards can easily yield a 100 point improvement in your scores.

How Do I Get Approved?

If you do not have credit cards, you need to sign up for one or two as soon as financially possible. If you want to maximize your credit repair results, establishing new credit can help propel your scores. Most people working through the credit restoration process will be unable to be approved with conventional credit cards. You will need to select a secured credit card to start the process. You can find some very good options here.

What cards do I choose?

Not all credit cards will benefit your credit repair effort equally. In fact, some credit cards can be harmful. Department store credit cards and gas cards, will not help your credit repair and should be avoided. For score building purposes you should stick with mainstream cards like MasterCard and Visa. Initially you will have to start with small limits, it's just important to monitor your balances, and try to keep them below 50%, and continue to use them regularily. When you're ready to re-pull your credit, make sure to pay down the balances completely.

Managing Your Balances

The credit scoring model used by most lenders is called the FICO model. FICO places a significant amount of weight on the relationship between your account balance, as reported to the credit bureaus, and your limit. For credit repair success you must keep your balances low. The credit scoring model recognizes card utilization in 25 percent increments. If you run your balance over 75 of your limit your scores will tumble. But use less than 25 percent of the cards capacity and your scores will be increased.

Timing is EVERYTHING!

Managing your credit card balances for credit repair success is an art. In theory there is no harm in using your cards to their limit as long as you manage to reduce the balance before the date that the creditor reports the card balance to the credit bureaus. This is not as easy as it seems. Many people pay their balances in full when they receive their monthly bill, only to be shocked to see that their credit report shows that their cards are maxed out. It is unlikely that the billing cycle and the creditors schedule for reporting to the credit bureaus will coincide. For credit repair purposes you may want to reduce your balances and keep them low.

Wrapping it all up!

Would you like to give your credit scores a powerful boost? Now is the time. By using these credit repair techniques you will make your credit cards work for you. If you do not have any open credit trade lines, open two new accounts today. Since initially you probably won't be approved for unsecured credit cards, get a couple of secured cards. Stay with MasterCard and Visa, and avoid store cards and gas cards.