There are things you can do and which are useful to remember with regards to credit scoring:

• Pay down credit card debt to 30% or less; high credit balances hurt your score.

• Do not close accounts unless credit reporting shows you have many revolving accounts.

• Do not consolidate debt into one or two cards as it is usually better to have low balances on several cards versus a high balance on one or two.

• Review your credit report for each repository for accuracy.

• Be cautious with credit repair companies especially if their services are tied to estate financing.

Keep all legal and important documents such as release of judgment, release of lien, bankruptcy, divorce decree, letters form creditors regarding errors in reporting and the like as these may be important in the future for correcting any possible errors on future or present credit reporting. Each credit repository maintains their own information and it may be necessary to provided documents to the three repositories to correct a reporting error.  

It is important to remember that collections and charge offs may not disappear after seven years and judgments & bankruptcies will remain for 10 years.