There are many credit repair companies and counselors claiming to give the cure-all for your credit woes, promising insider tricks to repair your credit fast. These services don’t come cheap, but based on the potential money they can save you in interest rates, it certainly looks like a great deal… if they can deliver! Or is it?

The truth is… everything these companies or individuals do to repair your credit, you can do yourself. The Federal Trade Commission claims it, urging Americans to educate themselves and take their money matters into their own hands.

Of course to take advantage of this, you must know which steps to take, the ones which will get the greatest response from lenders and other financial institutions to help repair your credit. The same tactics credit repair companies would use on your behalf, and learned after years of trial. These tips are not secrets, and any good credit repair manual can fully detail how and why each tactic works, and detail which ones should be right for you based on your situation.

Contrary to some popular belief, repairing your credit goes beyond sending out a few simple letters, than waiting for lenders to magically wipe large chunks of your debt out and remove the negative entries from your credit reports.

The FTC itself states that time, and a concerted effort of paring down your debts through a debt repayment plan are your main keys to success. Instant fixes simply aren’t as powerful as others may perceive them to be. Cutting down on the number of credit cards you own and similar quick fixes can help, but the improvement in score will be marginal at best.

The core of the problem is your debt and past history of non-payments or late payments, which must themselves be addressed. Doing this takes the type of effort and sacrifice some simply are not willing to make for our greater good. This means drastically cutting back on expenses for an extended period until the debt is well within a manageable level or entirely paid off.

If you are going to look into other quick fix options as well, you should first obtain a copy of your credit report, to which you’re entitled to a free copy each year. This report will show you who’ll need to contact to get those negative entries removed and improve your score, as well as giving you the ability to make sure the data on the report is correct.

If there is something amiss on your report that is severely damaging to your score, getting this corrected could be the one quick fix that could actually have a major impact on your score.

With the knowledge of the information contained in your credit report, and what to do with it, you should be able to make small inroads into your FICO score woes. The meat and potatoes of the problem will need to be delved into head first though, with a long, grueling road ahead that will be anything but gravy.