Steps towards establishing Good Credit Condition even in case of No Credit or Bad Credit Score
1. Analyze Your Credit Report
This involves two processes: Pulling your credit report and analyzing
a) Pulling Your Credit Report
The first priority thing you need to do is to pull your credit report in order to analyze your current credit situation. A great free resource is CreditKarma.com and for an annual free and official version use this federal site. I recommend doing both and comparing. The federal one is most accurate but you can only do it once a year.
Pay close attention to the major bad credits and dues.
Many people do not acknowledge their bad credit, thinking that it will somehow go away. But that is not a good strategy.
You have to face those bad credits head on in order to overcome them.
b) Determine if you can overcome your situation
You have to be honest with yourself while analyzing this situation. You can easily overcome small dues but big credit areas require a different strategy.
If for example, can you honestly pay $200,000 that is due in medical bills?
You need to realize these things; Are your finances that strong? Are you about to gather a large sum of money that will meet this expense?
Among many alternative options bankruptcy may be the last alternative for you.
Only after proper and honest analysis, plans can be made and implemented.
2. The Strong Motivator
Be clear of your big “WHY?” Factor.
You have to have a strong and logical yet emotional motivation.
Write it down and put it somewhere that is in front of you daily. Let it remind you and keep you motivated.
3. Evaluate Your Various Sources of Finances
After analyzing your credit report, then you need to evaluate your various sources of finances.
Find out where you’re spending your money. Also find out how can you make additional income. A great free resources is using Mint.com to track your spending. You can create categories of spending to see what are needs and wants. I recommend looking 3 months back and labeling all transactions to identify your spending habits. See what you can eliminate going forward.
a) Check on Expenses
What are those things that you are wasting money on unnecessarily?
You can not neglect your basic necessities, but what are the over the top expenses. “Find the holes in your purse.”
Some people spend tons of money on fast food, online shopping, excess credit card charges, and on multiple online program subscriptions.
Similarly identify your major expenses and create a budget for max spending each month on these items to limit your losses.
b) Creating Additional Income
By cutting the unnecessary expenses, some additional savings can be made.
Instead of going out for fast food multiple times, you can limit it to once or twice a month. Instead of multiple subscriptions you can limit it to one like Amazon Prime alone.
Turn off the subscription packs for alerts from various e-business shopping websites. Being prompt with credit card payment is also a must.
Selling unused goods can give additional income once in a while. Also evaluate if it’s worth picking up a side hussle or second part time job.
It requires strong discipline in managing finances.
4. Just Do It
Take action now. Don’t wait for next year.
After the evaluation and proper planning, with a strong motivator backing you, and with a little reward; All you now need is to, just go get it.
Follow your plan, track your success, and watch yourself earn an amazing credit score.
Have a positive mindset while taking action.
One method to keep things rolling is to start with small debts and paying those off first, then move onto the bigger ones. With a sense of accomplishment, you can conquer more. Another method is paying down the highest interest rate credits first while paying the minimums on other cards. This is the best financially but sometimes it is not motivating if the largest interest rates are also the largest sums.
Consider consolidating your credit card debts with a 0% APR credit card like Double Cash. Check for when the rates will increase on the card and create a payment plan schedule to pay off the combined debt before the rate adjusts.
5. Reward Yourself
Set small goals and Reward yourself on achieving them.
For example, after de-cluttering and selling off unused stuffs give yourself small coffee or small snacks gifts that satisfies you.
Do what ever makes you feel good without building up more debt.
6. Serve the needy
In addition, find an avenue to give. It enriches life.
It is sowing seeds of goodness that will bear fruits in future.
Apart from money; your time, your skills and talents can also be of value to others.
Serving others nourishes your soul and makes you feel good about yourself. A simple way to help is to share this article with others so they can get their credit in line as well.
Conclusion
It takes time and efforts to increase your credit score drastically. It will not be easy.
But with proper analyzing and planning, combined with strong motivation and discipline one can achieve this goal.
Remember that you will get the best deals—once your credit scores increase.
Melissa Dorman is a Oregon and Washington Licensed Broker with Yascha Group at Living Room Realty in Portland, OR. Follow Yascha Group on Facebook.