First, I would analyze my credit situation. What I would primarily need to know is whether I currently have any open credit cards. Chances are, if I have a 550 credit score, I have ruined my credit lines, thus losing my ability to build credit.

If I had open credit lines, I would never again make a late payment on them.

If I didn’t have open credit lines, I would get two secured credit cards. I would then never make a late payment on them. This will help me to establish on-time payments – payment history is a huge part of your score.

The above will solve part of the problem. However, it won’t solve all of the problems. If I had lines of credit that were maxed out, I would start working on getting them paid off. I would start with the line that I owed the least on, and I would pay it off entirely. This would help to free me from the payment on that line. All savings would then be applied to the next line, and so on.

If you are using more than 30% of your available credit, it’s killing your credit score. If I had a 550 score, I would probably be in this situation – debt is what puts most people in this situation. I would stop spending so that I could pay down that debt.

Also, I would do what I could to get added to the card account of a person who has a solid reputation for on-time payments. This would have to be a family member or someone that I could pay to add me. I of course wouldn’t have a card for the account, I would be piggybacking onto another person’s for the credit benefit. Right now it’s legal, but it’s obviously hard to get a person to do this for you. If I couldn’t make this happen, I would still make on-time payments and over time, my credit would improve significantly.

I would stay away from silly programs that will help you to build credit. Most of it is garbage. To build credit, you have to pay off your credit lines and make on-time payments. If you’re looking for secret wizardry and other sleight-of-hand mumbo jumbo, you’re simply likely to get ripped off. Your credit score is based on your ability to make on-time payments, and to manage the credit that you have already been given. Once you have a few big delinquencies, there won’t be a whole lot that can be done for you until those delinquencies fall off of your report.

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