If you are looking to make any significant purchase that may require financing in the near or even not so near future knowing and correcting any credit score issues can save you a great deal of time and money. The lower your credit score the more difficult it is to find financing and the higher your interest rate will be even if financing is available.
When evaluating your credit score you just want to look at the following items, negative information, positive reporting, and length of time. Just about all information on your credit report falls into one of these areas. If you want to improve your credit score you just need to minimize the negative and keep the positive, length of time is the most difficult to control because time can only be what it is.
First thing to do is to pull a free copy of your credit report this can be done once a year from all three credit agencies at www.annualcreditreport.com, you will have to pay a small fee to see your score but the report itself is free. Review all the negative information and see if there is any incorrect information. If any information is incorrect follow the site listed guidelines to dispute it. If you see negative information that is correct but you want to try to clear up then contact the creditor directly and see if you can pay any late or past due payments on the contingency that they remove the negative reporting or show it paid in full.
If you need more positive loan history consider taking out a secured loan from a bank and making payments on it for one year. This is usually accomplished by perhaps opening a certificate of deposit at the bank for a certain dollar amount and then taking out a loan against that amount. This will help you to show timely payment history and will bring up your credit score.
Monitoring and correcting credit issues will make a significant difference in the financing terms you are able to secure when you are ready to borrow money.