Our lives are dependent on how good our credit score looks to lenders. It's something that we can't get around and have to make sure that we maintain our score for years. That being said, everything doesn't often go as smoothly as we like in life and our credit score will suffer. This means a loss of job and no salary to where you can't pay bills on time. You score will go down as your credit will begin to plummet in a downward spiral. It can seem you will never get your score back to what it used to be. There are some things you should know about your score and how it effects your life.

Increase Score

It's possible that you can increase your score by paying attention to what your are spending and buying. Begin to review your score more closely to see what makes it drop and increase. You will have to do this over a period of a few months to really see the full effect. If you are using your credit cards randomly, then make a plan to only use them for emergencies. Stop grabbing them to pay for every little thing you want to buy. You also need to slow down on wanting everything that you see. Take the time to make a budget and reel in your spending that is driving up your credit limits. This will make you disciplined when handling your credit cards or using credit unwisely. Everyone has found that their spending is out of control at some time in their lives.

Disputes

Look at your reports with a keen eye so you can dispute anything that is hurting your score. Some people never look at their report to find errors. Never trust that all reporting of credit use or even late bill pays are correct. All credit agencies allow you to file a dispute once you have spotted something that you are convinced is not yours or seriously wrong. Disputes can take a bit to be reversed, but you will see a spike in your score once its resolved. Make sure you take advantage of the dispute option on all reports that are ran and clean up the mistakes as you go.

Reports

Everyone is entitled to a free credit report once they get rejected for requesting credit at a business. Today, it seems like a lot of credit card businesses are offering a free report and score to up-sell to their customers. Where ever you get your report, make sure it's correct and you understand how to read it. Many people don't really understand what every thing relates to on their credit report. This makes them miss errors that they should be looking for at all times. Reports are updated as you have a change in a credit such as paying off a bill or increasing the credit on a card. Make sure to always get your entitled reports and that you do this every month. You can learn a lot from a credit report by keeping them organized and understanding them.

Lenders

Not all lenders look at credit score to give you a loan. This is starting to become frequent for a lot of lenders looking for different types of customers. Our score can be the number on factor on whether we get a home or a new car. You may want to ask some lenders upfront if they consider other things like paying on time or no bankruptcies. This can always help if you are struggling to get your score up in time to get the new car you desperately need to drive to work. Lenders can be flexible if you just ask about their policies. You might be surprised to find out some could careless about your score and want to see other ways you handle your finances.

Our scores don't need to keep us in a financial prison. Learn as much as you can about your score and how it can change your life around. Understand what you can do to increase it each month. This may mean you need to stop with all of the spending that seems random and unnecessary. Make sure to take advantage of the dispute option for all credit reports that you pull. It's likely something is wrong on your report and you can dispute it. It will take a couple of weeks, but at least it will be off your report for good. Get all of the free credit reports that are available to you. When someone rejects you when you've asked for a credit line, then you get a free credit report. Most business will tell you why they've rejected you as well. Ask lenders what else will they consider besides just a your score.