How Long Does It Take to Rebuild Credit?

Posted August 3, 2024

Bad credit can be poor financial decisions as life changes, such as a divorce or illness, that prevent you from meeting your financial obligations. Bad credit may also be errors from credit reports. Many things you can do to rebuild bad credit, but it's not something that can happen overnight, it takes time and effort.

Rebuilding Bad Credit: How Long Will It Take?

Bad credit is defined as a credit history that includes negative remarks, such as late payments or charge-off accounts, which are damaging to your credit score According to myFICO, a poor or bad FICO credit score is one that falls between 300 and 579, out of a possible 850.

There is no standard time for how long it can take to fix past credit mistakes and increase your score into the “good credit” range, which means a FICO score of 670 or better.

It can depend on several factors, including:

Types of negative information on your credit report

Numerous negative or derogatory marks on your credit report.

• Negative age information
• Your credit rating was before your score dropped.

Your credit rebuilding process may be based on the severity of the negative history dragging down your score. For example, a charge-off, foreclosure, bankruptcy, or court judgment may be more difficult to recover from than one late payment.

If you notice incorrect information on your credit report, start working on correcting errors with creditors and credit reporting agencies.