Having poor credit can severely limit lifestyle choices and the ability to handle financial emergencies. Modern loans, credit card applications, rental applications and even jobs often rest on having good credit. While unpaid bills can come back to haunt consumers years later, the good news is that bad credit isn’t too hard to take care of if you know what to do. Here’s how you can fix your credit to get back in the game.

See Where You Stand

Before making a credit repair plan, find out where you’re starting from. Request a credit report from one of the major credit reporting agencies. Don’t bother with the companies that charge for this service; you’re entitled to one free report each year directly from Experian, Equifax and Trans Union.

To identify inaccuracies on your report, look for differences between the reports. In some cases, locating errors is all that needs to be done to fix bad credit. If you confirm, however, that there are opportunities for improvement, you’re ready to start repairing your credit.

Identify All Outstanding Debts

Make a list of all the debts you need to take care of. Record the amounts you owe, ages of existing debts, account information and important contacts. Loans that are racking up the most interest should be your priorities to avoid owing too much more later, but be sure to continue paying consistently on all your other bills in the meantime.

If you have enough cash on hand and would like to clear things up right away, contact creditors directly and tell them you want to pay off your debts. While these debts may take some time to disappear from your credit report, future credit checks will show that these debts have already been paid off. Now you’re ready to start rebuilding your credit.

Set Up a Household Budget

To develop your new reputation as a worthy credit recipient, you should create a plan to ensure that your future bills are always paid off on time. Don’t stretch yourself thin by taking on more bills than you can pay. After taking care of outstanding debts and maintaining consistent bill payments, you’re ready to really develop your score with a new credit card.

Get Any Credit Card You Can

If you can’t get a store credit card or unsecured card, get a secured card from your bank. To do this, you’ll need to make a small deposit to give the creditors peace of mind about lending to you. Don’t go overboard with your new credit card; keep purchases small and pay them off every month. Most people like to reserve this card for routine purchases such as groceries and gas, but the most important thing is to stay diligent about repayment.

Once you’ve stayed in good standing with your secured card for about a year, approach your lender about getting an unsecured card. From here, your credit score will really take off. Just keep paying those bills on time and you’ll soon enjoy all the perks that come with having good credit.

This guest post was provided by Prudent Financial Services, helping Canadian regain their financial stability by offering affordable bad credit personal loans.  For more information please visit, http://www.prudentfinancial.net

Government proposals to exempt businesses with an annual turnover of less than £880,000 from having to file accounts at Companies House are bound to backfire according to research conducted by Graydon UK, the commercial credit referencing agency. An overwhelming majority (91 per cent) of credit and finance professionals questioned believe that the proposals will make it harder for small businesses to access trade credit.

The research finds also that 87 per cent of respondents do not believe that the Government’s attempt to reduce the administrative burden on SMEs by removing the requirement to file statutory accounts will help drive business growth.

Martin Williams, Head of External Affairs at Graydon UK, commented; “The Government has repeatedly overlooked the simple fact that it is not just banks that provide small businesses with credit, but also their suppliers in the form of trade credit. These suppliers are saying that being deprived of access to their customers’ accounts will hinder small businesses in gaining access to credit and finance from their company.”

“The availability of funding for SMEs remains a major issue. While banks have access to up-to-the-minute financial information on their customers, it is vital that trade suppliers can also determine the strength of their customers’ finances before they agree to provide them with goods and services.”

The research also highlights that the proposal will not reduce the administrative burden on businesses as almost a third of respondents (29 per cent) said that they would ask customers directly for their year end accounts and 59 per cent said that they would ask for both year end and monthly management accounts before extending credit to them. Just eight per cent of businesses would agree to extend credit without having access to the company’s financial information.

Martin Williams added; “The Government is out of step with reality. Few businesses would risk extending finance to another without first reviewing that business’s financials even in a benign economic environment. This is not the silver bullet the government is looking for to reduce red tape for businesses and actually risks causing not only more damage but more administrative work for SMEs if trade suppliers have to request accounts direct from SMEs themselves.

“Graydon and the Institute of Credit Management (ICM) feel so strongly about the impact this proposal will have on SMEs that they intend to start a Petition of Britain’s leading suppliers of goods and services to reinforce the overwhelming view that the Government needs to reverse its thinking on filing exemption proposals.”

Philip King, Chief Executive of the Institute of Credit Management, added: “Exempting micro business from filing accounts is wholly the wrong way of tackling what is a comparatively simple issue: businesses should be prepared to provide more information not less. Without financial information that can be trusted, suppliers will not extend credit to their customers.

“Growth will be restricted, not encouraged. We will lobby vigorously against these steps and against the Government’s insistence on delivering mixed messages to business. Credit fuels business. Access to credit comes from greater access to information, not less.”

If you would like discuss how our Debt Collection service can assist your business, please visit the Debt Collectors section on our website,  contact us on +44 (0) 151 515 3014 or email us.

Please note: Information in this blog post is content property of Business Credit Management UK (www.creditman.co.uk) and the full original article can be found by clicking here.