It takes little more than a couple of missed payments or refused applications to find your self crossing the fine line between good and poor credit. Poor credit means creditors believe you are a risk to lend money to, and will more often than not reject your request for a loan. If you’ve found yourself suddenly shunned from obtaining credit, there are a few things you can try to get a loan or extend your credit.

First of all, you can wait for some of the negative information on your report to be removed to make space for more recent information. Your credit report only keeps roughly five years of information at a time, so if you avoid adding any new negative details, your report will eventually clean itself up over time.

In the case that you have an extremely negative credit history, you have no other option aside from proving you are no longer the irresponsible person that created that bad financial history. In most cases, a creditor will grant you a credit card with a very low limit to give you a chance to prove your habits have changed. The interest will be sky high, but at this point you must accept what lenders offer you, as only good financial behavior from this point on will help you. You can avoid spending too much money on interest by reviewing your credit card’s terms and conditions to find out what the interest-free grace period is for paying the balance.

To rebuild your credit using a credit card, use it to make purchases at least once a month. This can easily be achieved by setting up an authorized monthly payment of a certain bill, or using it strictly for one thing like gas or groceries. Be absolutely sure you can afford to immediately pay whatever you charge to the card, and when the bill comes in, pay the whole balance. Paying off the entire balance each month is crucial in proving you are stable, as well as avoids unreasonably high interest charges.

A disciplined attitude and determination to follow the above steps guarantees your credit will slowly begin to improve, and the door to higher limits and lower rates will soon reopen.