Have you recently been denied a loan, an apartment or mortgage, or a credit card? You may be in need of credit repair information and tips.

Being turned down for credit is often an indication of some negative entries on your credit report, which can happen in two circumstances.

One is that you have mismanaged your credit, which includes overusing your available credit. More commonly, your credit file has some blemished information, hence negatively impacting your credit score.

No matter which situation you find yourself, it is imperative that you embark on credit repair sooner rather than later.

A little self-education goes along way in rectifying your situation, so here is some credit repair information you can use.

1. Start by requesting a copy of your credit report from all the 3 credit bureaus. You are allowed a free credit reports from each bureau per year. You can also get a free credit report if you have been denied credit within the last sixty days.

2. Upon receiving your report, study it closely. You must to examine each account (also known as tradeline) and mark those which are incorrect damaging your credit rating. Errors are more surprisingly common.

3. After you have determined which tradelines are erroneous entries, contact the credit bureau and request deletions from your report. You start with these because you have legitimate reason to dispute and most likely to have removed.

4. Even when you find some correct entries in your credit report, but the information is negative in nature, you can still try and have them removed. Find legitimate reasons such as re-aging, which means resetting of date of account, something especially common with debt collectors.

5. Make certain all your correspondence with creditors is through registered mail. You might not want to do this with the credit bureaus though, as it raises a red flag due to as this is what credit repair clinics advice their clients to do.

6. The law allows 30 days for any action to take place. If the credit bureaus determine that the entries were wrong or the creditor cannot verify the account, it will have to be deleted.

Just note that credit repair is not a quick fix, nor a one day affair. You need some persistence and guts.

No credit repair information is complete that does not tell you the things not to do. People with low credit scores often try desperate means to repair their credit and are often misinformed, hence end up hurting their credit even more. Here are some of the things you SHOULD NOT DO to repair your credit:

1. New Credit File or File Segregation: Many bogus credit repair companies entice people with false promises and bad credit repair information such as telling them they can create a new credit file. This is also known as file segregation and is illegal.

2. Many credit repair companies claim to they can repair credit by getting accurate negative information deleted from their credit reports, thus improving their rating. Now, this is not guaranteed. You must first understand the process of getting information removed. No one can actually delete negative items from your credit file except the credit bureaus and your creditors.

3. Do not close old active accounts: If you have active credit accounts, do not close them. Keep them paid on time as they help build credit history and therefore help raise your credit score

4. Do not make advance payments for credit repair if using a credit repair service. Asking for advance payments for credit repair is illegal. They can only charge you for legitimate services that they have already provided. Do not be lured into any contract promising to repair your credit before any work has been done.