Credit Repair: Make a Plan, Improve Your Credit, Avoid Scams

Bad credit can get better

Bad credit can prevent you from getting a mortgage, car loan, credit card, apartment, or even a job. The sensible strategies in Credit Repair help you take control of your finances, clean up your credit reports and rebuild your credit. Learn how to:

• prioritize debts and create a budget
• reduce debts and cut expenses
• negotiate with creditors
• correct credit report errors and remove old information
• add positive information to your credit reports
• adopt strategies to rebuild your credit, and
• avoid identity theft and credit repair scams.

The 16th edition covers when a lender must explain credit decisions and the latest strategies for dealing with student loan debt. It also includes recent debt collection developments, such as limitations on how often a collector can call and restrictions on a collector’s use of texts, emails, and social media.

Cara O’Neill is a legal editor and writer at Nolo specializing in bankruptcy and small claims litigation. Cara authors several Nolo book titles, including How to File for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, Chapter 13 Bankruptcy, The New Bankruptcy, and Everybody’s Guide to Small Claims Court. She also coauthors Legal Research: How to Find and Understand the Law, The Foreclosure Survival Guide, Solve Your Money Troubles, and Credit Repair, and edits several more. Before joining Nolo, Cara practiced law for over 20 years in civil and criminal litigation, bankruptcy, and administrative law. During that time, she served as an administrative law judge, took dozens of criminal and civil cases to jury verdict, appeared before the California Court of Appeals, and taught undergraduate and graduate law courses. She earned her law degree in 1994 from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, where she served as a law journal editor and graduated as a member of the Order of the Barristers—an honor society recognizing excellence in courtroom advocacy.