hi barbara. first thing i want you to do is go on www.annualcreditreport.com. by federal law, you are entitled to one copy of each of your 3 credit reports per year, for free. here, you can get all 3 in a user friendly website. historically, most credit reports contain some misinformation. a lot of credit reports contain several pieces of information that is not correct and will lower your credit score. what you need to do is go on this site and dispute as many things as you can that are not correct. there may be information on there that belongs to a person with a similar name or a very close social security number, etc. human beings put in that information and lest face it, humans make mistakes. go on the site, look at all 3 of your reports, and dispute as much as you can. by law, the credit agency has to investigate anything you dispute. the creditors has 30 days to file something back with the agency on your dispute as to whether your dispute is wrong or right. if it is wrong, it gets corrected. if it is right, it remains the same, and if the creditor doesn't answer back in 30 days, the whole record from that creditor gets wiped off your report. anything that is negative that can get changed to a positive and/ or wiped off completely is going to change your credit score.