Fixing a bad credit report is not a pleasant experience. There are basically two ways of going about the credit repair process.
First, you can do it yourself. Second, you can hire a credit attorney. For all you “do-it-yourselfers” it is mighty tempting to try it on your own. After all, it is much cheaper, right?
First, there is a great deal of legalese you need to learn when fixing your credit. For instance you will have to learn your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and so on.
If you are not the kind of person who likes to do legal research in your free time, or don’t have patience for translating wordy statutes and confusing case precedent, then this might not be for you. But if you are determined enough to plow through the stacks of law books, then you should expect to spend at least a a few Saturday afternoons researching applicable credit laws.
Once you have waded through the stacks of law books and thoroughly irritated your local librarian, you will need to draft a good dispute letter. Even if you have some decent writing chops, this type of letter takes a unique method to be effective.
For example, the credit bureaus are constantly looking for those people trying do it yourself credit repair. They can easily spot the dispute letters written by amateurs. This can be a problem since credit bureaus are notorious for ignoring badly written dispute letters.
Next, you need to travel to the nearest post office and stand in line so that your letters are all certified. This is time consuming and quite costly. If you send three letters for each round of disputes, you are looking at paying about ten dollars per dispute.
By now you are probably wishing you had more free time. Mailing dispute letters via certified mail takes a lot of time. Unless you are extremely casual about how you spend your free time, this is probably not worth your time.
Disputing bad credit errors on your own also takes an organized office space and a strategic plan. For example, you will need a spreadsheet to track the progress of each disputed item. Plus, you will need to give yourself reminders or some type of alert in the event the bureaus or creditors have allowed the proper investigation period to expire.
Does this sound like fun? Do it yourself credit repair is overwhelming and intimidating especially if you are not highly motivated to learn the federal credit laws. So, unless you are dedicated to becoming an expert in the federal statutes, the issue is not can you afford to hire a credit repair attorney, but rather can you afford NOT to seek help from an affordable qualified attorney.
Tags: bad credit, bad credit repair, charge offs, Credit, credit repair, credit report repair, debt, Finance, home loans, money, personal finance