Do you know what your credit report looks like? Are you depending on a lender to clean it up? Are you planning on paying for credit repair? Don't make these mistakes. You can do it yourself.

In today's wonder world of credit, it is inevitable that each and every one of us will experience an error on our credit report. It can be in the name, address, employment data or in the credit history itself. When applying for a mortgage, these issues can come up and create an enormous amount of questions being asked to the customer. Explanations and documentation to the lender is the usual course of action. The lender will then submit these to their credit reporting company for correction. Is this the right course of action? Absolutely NOT!

What people don't realize is that when a lender proceeds to have a credit report corrected, the correction is verified and only valid for approximately 90 days. The credit report will then return to its original form, errors and all. Just when you think it is all cleaned up, it comes right back.

What can you do? The simple answer to this is that you must do it yourself. Doing this in advance of applying for a mortgage or any other type of credit lending will make the process proceed much smoother.

-First, obtain a free credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com. You should request a credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian, since each one can have different information recorded.

-Check the name, spelling, address, previous addresses, previous names, employment data, date of birth, and social security number to make sure that this information is correct.

-Then go through each of the credit trade lines and make sure that the information is correct and up to date. Account number, open date, payment amount, payment history and balance is all vital information and should be corrected if it is found to be wrong.

-Make note of any closed accounts still appearing, duplicate accounts, derogatory statements, judgments and liens that have been satisfied and bankruptcies that have cleared. Many times, accounts charged off or cleared in bankruptcy will still appear to be active.

-Compile a list of all errors that have been found and gather any documentation you have to confirm that there is an error.

-Dispute each error with each of the credit companies directly over the internet. The companies have 30 days to investigate and respond. If necessary, they will request documentation to be faxed or mailed.

Following these steps will clean up your credit report permanently. It does not cost anything to do this. There is absolutely no need to pay someone to repair your credit.