Cleaning up your credit report takes time and effort. The three credit reporting agencies are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Federal law states that you are entitled to one free credit report from each agency every calendar year, so the first thing you want to do is to order your credit report to see what is on there. Then you can begin to clean up your credit report.

Your Personal Information

It is important that every piece of personal information on your credit report is accurate. Your name, any aliases you may go by, your current address and all of your previous addresses are used by creditors and potential employers to identify you. If you notice any incorrect personal information on your credit report then use the information available on the report to submit a dispute and have your information cleaned up. It would even be worth it to wait 30 days and purchase new reports to make sure that the information you submitted was properly changed.

Your Creditors

Set aside a few hours to sit down and analyze every creditor listed on your credit report to make certain the information is correct. Creditors make mistakes, but those mistakes normally go unnoticed unless you call attention to them. First you are going to want to make sure you recognize every creditor on your list. Sometimes you may not recognize a company name because that is a company working on behalf of the retailer you purchased from. Do some research before you determine a creditor is unfamiliar. Make sure you recognize all of the balances on your report as given by your creditors, and also make sure that all of the reported action on your report is accurate. If anything is not right, make a note of it and then file a dispute with the credit reporting agency. According to Kiplinger.com, you can expect an answer within 30 to 45 days. If the credit agency cannot confirm the creditor information, then many times that credit account is dropped from your report.

Your Credit Score

The final phase in cleaning up your credit report is to try to improve your credit score. One way to do that is to start paying all of your bills on time. You can also pay off smaller credit accounts but leave the accounts open. Older credit accounts help to establish a history of credit, which can help to increase your credit score. Avoid opening any new accounts, and use cash instead of using your current credit accounts.

Source:

Thesmarterwallet.com - How to Build Good Credit and Clean Up Bad Credit

CNN Money - Cleaning Up Your Credit

Kiplinger.com - Clean Up Your Credit