6 Tips to Raise Your Credit

Finance

  • Author Jennifer Quilter
  • Published November 14, 2011
  • Word count 517

There's always something more you can do for the good of your credit rating. These tips to raise your credit are a mix of things you can do right now quickly to make a small push, and things you can do that will raise your score over time. Having good credit practices on a daily basis is going to be what keeps you from falling into a lower range and undoing your hard efforts, but even with that everyone can always do something a little extra to push themselves up a bit further.

  1. Any credit improvement strategies are going to begin with getting a copy of your report and understanding what you are seeing, so this is your first step and your first tip. Get a copy of your report, and understand what you are seeing!

  2. Your next tip is to fix errors on your report. This can include incorrectly marked credit limits, missed payments, or things that are marked correctly but are over seven years old because they should have fallen off your report. To have any of these errors fixed call the companies and get things changed—this may take several phone calls and/or a written letter. Make sure to keep on it until you see it come off.

  3. You can write and ask for a goodwill adjustment on some of your past mistakes. It doesn't hurt to try. What this is, is when you have an old late payment on an account that you have always paid on time since then, you can write to the company and ask for a goodwill adjustment while pointing out that you have been good about your payments and such since then. They may not do it, but it can't hurt!

  4. One of the major factors that affect your rating is the amount of credit available to you versus the amount you are using. There are two different things you can do with that information to improve things. The first is to call and ask your card company to raise your limit! This can't hurt, as long as you don't take this as license to start spending a lot more.

  5. The next thing you can do on this note is to pay down your card balances. This is always going to be a good thing to do. As a general practice you want to use less than thirty percent of your limit and pay it off in full each month.

  6. Dusting off an old card that you haven't used in a while can help age your report. The age of your credit is a smaller factor that many others, but can really help boost you up if all of your other accounts are newer. If you can develop an older history it shows that you've had good practices for a longer period of time and your rating gets a considerable boost.

Hopefully these tips have helped you learn more about what things have an affect on your score and have given you ideas on things you can do to help you get to a good place financially.

Knowing more about what the numbers actually mean can help you decide how to improve. Check out the Credit Rating Scale so that you know more, and get answers about thecredit score ranges.

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