The easiest tip to a good credit score is to pay your bills on time. Even if you have negative items on your credit it is still very important to pay your bills on time.

The reason is because by paying this month bills on time you will be showing positive payment history. Positive payment history is one of the biggest influences on your credit score.

It also matters how much time has passed between derogatory items on your credit report and when your score is calculated. After an amount of time, allegedly four years, negative items on your credit are not weighed as heavily. Thus it is very important for you to build a positive payment history.

The next tip is to remove any inaccurate information. Unfortunately our credit reporting system has many flaws.

Often a divorce will result in bad credit. The divorce judge will divide the debts between both parties. Then if one of the parties defaults on a loan, even though they were court ordered to pay, it will be reported on both parties credit.

When a lender makes a mistake it can result in bad credit for you. An example of this is when the amount due on a loan changes and you are not notified. You continue to make your regular payments yet your credit is being damaged every month.

If you identity is stolen this can be devastating to your credit. Another common source of inaccurate information is credit reporting errors. Thus you need to keep an eye on your credit report if you have a 500 credit score or a 700 score.

These are all inaccurate marks on your credit report. You should dispute and remove all of these marks.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act was passed to help you remove these inaccurate listings. This law states that inaccurate information must be removed from your credit report.

To dispute an inaccurate mark you can hire a credit repair service. They will draft a dispute letter and send it to each credit bureau that is reporting the inaccurate listing. Or you can do this compose a letter yourself, however you should know that credit bureaus often do not conduct investigations based on one dispute letter.

Credit bureaus will often respond to a dispute letter by asking for more information. If you have many negative marks then I suggest hiring a credit repair service.