So you’ve found yourself in the position of having not so great credit. Well here are my top 5 ways to make your credit great again. One thing you need to realize is repairing your credit will take time and a lot of patience. Personal finance columnist and author of Your Credit Score, Your Money & What’s At Stake, Liz Weston, notes that you might not see any improvement in your score for 30 to 60 days. After all, the best way to raise your credit score is repair your history, and then continue to monitor it over time.

1. Check Your Credit Report

It’s impossible to fix your credit if you don’t know what is driving your score down. So your first step should be to obtain a copy of all 3 (Experian, Equifax & TransUnion) of your credit reports and check them for any apparent errors. You’ll want to keep an eye out for any inaccuracies or wrong information such as late payments, inaccurate balances or unknown accounts.

Bonus tip: We like Identity IQ as a source to obtain your reports. You can get all 3 in one place for only $1 and keep it open if you decide to monitor it.

2. Reduce the Amount of Debt You Owe

Your credit score is going to continue to suffer until you can pay off some of your high balances. Stop using your credit cards and start to keep track of your debt. Write down every account you have open, how much you owe, and the interest rates. Use this information to create a payment plan for yourself, paying off the cards with the highest interest rates first, but always maintaining minimum payments on the other cards. A large factor in helping the banks determine your risk factor is “Credit Utilization”, which is simply referring to your balances in relation to their limits on revolving accounts.

Bonus tip: You want to focus on getting your balances under 30% utilization.

3. Pay your bills on time.

This should go without saying, but paying your bills on time is the best way to raise your credit score. Payment history can account for up to 35% of your FICO score, so any late or missed payments are going to keep your score down, way down. If you have missed payments in the past, work to get your payments up to date, and then stay current on those accounts. The longer you continue to pay your bills on time after fixing these mistakes, the more you will see your score increase.

If you have a long history of late or missed payments, you may be concerned that these will keep your score down forever. But, the older the issue is, the less it will count for. If you can get your payments up to date and continue paying on time, your good payment patterns will start to erase your poor ones from the past.

Bonus tip: If your payments are constantly late just because you’re forgetful, use an automatic payment tool. This will ensure you won’t miss any payments due to being absent-minded.

4. Dispute errors

Remember when you got that copy of your credit reports and checked them for errors? Well, if you found any errors you need to dispute them with the credit bureaus. You should contact each of the credit bureaus that have the error in that report and ask each bureau to verify or remove the information. The best way to still do this is by writing them. (Yes snail mail)

Bonus tip: Your letter will be one of thousands that are received by the bureau each day, so you need to ensure you letter is clear and concise. This is not about writing an essay but being focused on the dispute error and reason, along with providing the relevant contact information to be corrected. If your letter cannot be understood clearly the chances of you receiving a response are decreased, and you may receive a stall response because of it.

5. Establish credit

Someone who has credit cards and has continually paid the balances responsibly is considered way less of a risk to a creditor than someone with no credit cards at all. Your credit score will increase over time if you have a couple of credit cards open as long as you don’t charge too much, and pay the bills on time.

If you’re unable to get a traditional credit card due to your credit hurdles, your best bet will be to get a secured credit card. Make sure your secured card reports to all 3 of the major credit bureaus and use it as a chance to prove your trustworthiness.

Raising your credit score is going to take time and energy, but it’s definitely worth the effort in the long run. Once you have pinpointed any errors on your credit report be sure to take the time to correct them. After you have fixed any past indiscretions, follow our guidelines to maintain your score. Remember that all your recent positive patterns are going to outweigh any past hurdles you’ve encountered.