How Important is Your Credit Report to You? (cont.)
Contributed by Stephanie Litaker
When you need to rebuild your credit, you need to work with creditors that will actually report your payments to the credit reporting agencies to help boost your credit score. When you make an on-time payment, your creditor does not have to report that. However, they are required to report your late payments, so if all that is ever reported are the late payments, it's easy to see why this will have a negative effect on your credit report.
Another way to help improve your credit report score is to work with a credit card company that works with people that have a credit report that isn't as good as it should be. You may be required to get a secured credit card (which means you give them a deposit), but through on-time payments over time your credit score will improve.
Know what's on your credit report
There are three different credit reporting agencies, and you should know what all three are saying about you. Also, all three services have information about how to get your credit report on their Web sites.
