To steer clear of any delinquencies, try setting up your bills for automatic withdrawal from your personal ckeching account, so that you won't have to deal with any collection agency in the future. Balance Your Credit Card Spending Regardless of whether you have one, two or three credit cards, remember to spend wisely and balance your credit card obligations. How Too Many Inquiries Can Damage Your Credit Score Each time someones looks at your credit report, an inquiry is often noted. However, if a lot of inquiries are made, you could appear to be shopping or looking around for different loans at once. This may also indicate that you've been rejected by a number of creditors, which could make you appear as a poor credit risk. Because you ve settled with your former creditor for an amount less than what you actually owe them, the creditor eventually reports the remaining balance which you weren t able to pay, to the credit reporting agencies, and this will get noted in your credit report as a deficiency balance . If you have debts with former creditors, make sure that you work out a full settlement with them, and guarantee that what s accomplished between you and your creditor does not get reported elsewhere. Here are five ways for disputing discrepancies in your credit report. Order a Copy Of Your Credit Report From The Big 3 Credit Agencies The first thing to do is to order a copy of your credit report directly from each, or any of the three major credit agencies. Don t get your credit report from third-party agencies, because chances are you could be disputing errors or flaws that don t even exist. You can easily get different quotes from banks and financial institutions, and you can easily compare figures, to determine which creditor offers the most convincing terms and conditions. Put Your Other Creditors On Hold If you re in a financial crisis, it would help if you call some of your creditors, and negotiate If you may be able to put on hold some of your payments. Credit monitoring services also cannot fully detect any fraudulent activity, because there are a number of details in your account which credit agencies are often not alerted, or notified about. - The problem with some credit monitoring agencies is that they charge fees which are unethically exorbitant.