Improving Your FICO Score -- Correcting Errors

FICO scores are determined from data in your credit report. But many credit reports are in error. When I became aware several years ago that you could get a copy of your own credit report free from www.annualcreditreport.com, I pulled a report from one of the 3 credit-reporting agencies. When I saw the errors present in my report, I wrote a letter and had the errors corrected. I also pulled the reports from the other 2 agencies, found errors in them and wrote letters to have them corrected as well.

Since then, I spread out my reports among the 3 agencies, getting a sample from one of them every 4 months to get a heads-up if there's a problem. While I'm not in the market for loans, FICO scores can effect other aspects of life such as insurance premiums, and can even keep you from getting a job.

In my case it was fairly easy to get the errors corrected. Perhaps your situation is a bit more complicated. Check out this MarketWatch story How to Correct Your Credit Report for a six-step guide.

FICO scores are less of a concern. Paying your bills on time and not over-utilizing your credit line will go a long distance to getting you that high FICO score. And correcting errors may help as well.