Dispute Everything on Your Credit Report
When you dispute items on your credit report (whether it’s a valid dispute or not), the credit reporting agency is required to respond within 30 days. If they don’t, they have to remove the item from your report.Think about it – if you dispute everything they’ll never have time to respond to all those disputes. The more people you can convince to do this, the harder it will be for them. We’re all in this together, so let’s see some teamwork! This will show the creditors that they cannot mess with us.
If you don’t have anything on your credit report, lenders won’t know if you’re a good borrower or a bad borrower. After wiping the slate clean, you can begin building credit from scratch.
Don’t Pay Bills on Time
By paying late, your creditors will think that you aren’t responsible. They’ll finally get it that you have more important things to do than write checks to them all day. By all means, don’t use a silly online bill pay service to keep your life organized and make bill-paying easy.
Use Revolving Credit Where Possible
Revolving credit refers to open-ended credit like your basic credit cards. These cards give you the opportunity to spend and spend whenever you need more money. They also show lenders that you’re not concerned about the costs of financing and that it doesn’t bother you to pay 20% annual interest.
If you felt like it, you could use alternatives to revolving debt – like installment debt. For example, a home equity loan requires fixed payments until you eliminate the balance. This demonstrates discipline to your lenders. Who wants that? What if you want to borrow more?
Get a Loud Answering Machine and Screen Your Calls
Communication is for the birds. There’s really no point in communicating with your creditors – they just want money. If you screen your calls, you’ll avoid their pleas and veiled threats altogether. It’s best to just let things play out as they will rather than take a proactive approach and fix your credit report. Sometimes if you ignore problems they just go away.
When you buy the answering machine, charge it.
Don’t Review Your Credit Report
Who cares if it’s free? It still takes time out of your busy day. Things like the US Government’s free credit report program are for whiny control-freaks. I’ve read a credit report or two, and it’s about as much fun as watching paint dry.
