There are legal things you can do, like disputing amounts or accounts you believe to be reported incorrectly. Until they are verified as accurate, they must be temporarily removed from the report. You can start making payments on time and things will begin to improve. The most important thing is to know what is in your report and see how your actions are being reported. Do not apply for multiple loans just to check rates...know first what you want.

You can, if you have the income to support it, open credit accounts, make purchases, then quickly pay them off. Innitially your score will go down because of the new debt, but as you pay them off you will now have new "good" accounts which will begin to outweigh the old "bad" ones and raise your scores.

Two ways to get your scores up as quickly as possible:

1) If you owe more than 50% of the maximum balance on any of your credit cards, then get those balances under the 50% mark. Once you go over 50%, the agencies penalize you as a risk and may drop your score significantly. You will notice the boost relatively quick once you get your balances lowered.

2) Take out a small credit card and charge your gas/food to it every month ($10-20 or less). At the end of every month, pay off the debt completely and bring the balance to $0. This shows an extreme stability to the bureaus and also shows a nack for clearing off your debt. This should boost your scores as well.

Sincerely,
Nick

Another thing you can do, and I explained this at length on my own website, is use your credit card to maximize your score. You only ever carry a third of the available credit as a balance and make the minimum payment every month. You're score will raise by a few points a month, sometimes as many as 10. But be very careful with your credit card and don't get out of control because you lose at least 10 points if you max out your card.

If you max out your card and pay half of the debt balance, does that increase your credit score at all for the next month?

For example. if your limit is $250. You have used $200, you buy gas which comes to $260 and pay off $135 of the debt. Will your credit score increase the following month?
thanks for the sweet site BTW

Generally they'll pound you with a fee if you max out your card, but paying off half of the debt will improve it because of the lower debt to credit ratio.

Try selling some of that stuff you bought with the credit card at a rummage sale or on Ebay, use the money to pay a larger chunk of the car off.

Thanks. will do

card* oops, car is good there too though

That is what what one of my friends did. She would charge stuff and make sure that she paid it off every month. The only problem is you have to make sure that you do it.