I have had BAD credit for at least 10yrs and I have a student loan in collection which I am making a payment this month. (which i will take care of this month) But I want to buy a house and go back to college … what is the best SENSIBLE advice. Thanks!!

obtain a copy of your credit report from all 3 agencies: experian, equifax, and transunion at www.annualcreditreport.com and go over every item on your report. make sure there are no errors, omissions, additions, or other discrepancies. identify those debts that are negotiable and those that are not, and contact the creditors to see if youre able to create a payment schedule that is satisfactory to you both. try to pay down the most expensive money first — that is, the debt that costs the most each month relative to the principal owed.

once one debt is paid off, do not pass go, do not collect $200 — apply that same amount to the next debt. once that is paid off, apply that monthly payment to the next debt, and so on and so on until youve cleared all debt. any collection account on your credit report thats more than 24 months old is not worth paying off — creditors have more than likely written off the loss.

itll take you about 3-6 months of clean payment history to see a significant gain in your FICO scores. 12 months after that, a mortgage should be a snap to procure.

What I would like to know is how to clean up my credit report of items that have already been placed there.

There are very few that are bonded. I work for an attorney that does not do desputes all the reapirs companies do. She actually serves the bureaus with a legal demand and the bureaus usually concede and update the credit report in less that 2 months. Her retainer is extremely cheap compaired to all the other attorneys charging $1000 to $4000. Also, her retainer covers you for 3 years. So if you mess up again or if something pops back up, no extra fee. She also gets all inquiries off. You have to understand that the bureaus violate your civil rights everyday and have been getting away with it for over 30 years. Since they cannot prove that they followed all the rules and regualtions before they reported the negative items, they must concede and delete. This is something that credit repair companies cannot do because you need an attorney to serve the papers. All they do is desputes which you can do yourself, however, if they validate , that could cause a problem if you go in later and serve them with a legal demand. Send me a note if you need additional info.

Where can I find a legal form letter to send to creditors on my credit report to dispute and/or request them to remove themselves from my credit report?

My ex-husband’s credit items are showing up on my credit report, so I’d like to begin working on getthing that stuff off.
Ahh… I can do this online? That is awesome! I will find that and do it.

And, no, these are not my accounts at all, so I’m not on any of them that I’m trying to get removed.
Oh Goodness! Let’s hope it doesn’t go down THAT road! I think these are things that happended while we were in separation and legally married while waiting-out the 6-month divorce period.

I’m unsure how the Community Property stuff works or if that still makes them MY debts or not.

You are doing this the hard way. Just dispute the information online with the credit reporting agencies and let THEM do the work. However, if you name is on these accounts as joint credit, they cannot and will not remove them from your credit. Not even the creditors themselves will do that. However, if these are recent postings on your credit, THEN your ex might be using your identity to obtain credit. If that is happening, you pretty much must press charges against him or else it will appear that you are complacent with his activities.

Hi,I am working Identiy Guard and it isn’t expensive and all they do is provide updates when someone accesses my report and helps me contact issues. But I have settled via attorney 99.9% of my accounts, and like it says I have a credit card open that isn’t open. To whom do i turn to get help just to understand it because I want it as clean as possible to raise my FICO score and because it has a lot of errors on it that would help my score. But I just don’t understand all of the terminology there ?
Any help or advice, please do not yahoo search and copy site, I need some practical person experienced device. They even say I should open a new credit card account because I haven’t had any for 6 years and I need to show I can have one and pay it. ???

you should open an account (credit card, gas card.. etc.) because no credit history is worse than a bad credit history. Having open accounts with low balances is what will raise your score. You dont need to pay a company like "identity Guard" to watch your report for fraud. Each credit bureau will give you a free credit report each year and you can get a free report at www.annualcreditreport.com. You can use one of these every 3 to 4 months to keep an eye on your own report . Go to each of thse sites and use your free report to request a deletion of an account that isnt yours.
www.equifax.com
www.transunion.com
www.experian.com
follow the directions. It is pretty easy to do.