12 ways to improve your credit scores fast!
1) Pay down your credit cards. Paying off your credit cards will help your utilization and will help your scores immediately.
Lenders like to see a big gap between the amount of credit you're using and your available credit limits. Getting your balances below 30% of the credit limit on each card will help raise your scores.
2) Keep Your Credit Card Balances Low. Use your cards sparingly. Running up balances on your credit cards will lower your scores. Having a balance that represents 35 percent or more of your overall available credit limit on each card will actually hurt you quite a bit.
You can increase your scores dramatically simply by limiting your charges to 30% or less of a card's limit.
3) Know your credit card limits. Be sure to check the limits on your credit repaorts periodically. Your scores might be being hurt if your lenders are showing lower limits than you actually have. If you find a discrepancy, contact your creditor immediately. Most credit-card issuers will quickly update this information if you ask.
If your issuer makes it a policy not to report consumers' limits, however -- as is the usual case with American Express cards -- the bureaus typically use your highest balance as a proxy for your credit limit.
4) Don't close unused accounts. One of the factors considered when calculating your credit score is the length of credit history (15% of your score is factored on this) Simply put, it is the length of time you've had the credit established with each creditor. You're rewarded for having a positive, long-term history with each creditor, even if the account is inactive or not used. The longer your positive credit history is with each creditor, the better. To avoid your creditors from closing inactive accounts, you shlould use older cards that might be sitting in a drawer. Remember, the older your credit history, the better. But if you stop using your oldest cards, the issuers may stop updating those accounts with the credit bureaus. The accounts will still appear, but they won't be given as much weight in the credit-scoring formula as your active accounts. Or in a worse case scenario, your creditor might decide to close the inactive account.
Make it a point to use your older cards every few months to charge a small amount and pay it back in full when the bill arrives.
5) Pay your bills on time. Although this one seems obvious many people usually fall into a trap where they pay one bill late and assume one late payment wont hurt them. The fact is that late payments are the most common piece of negative information that appears on peoples' credit reports and are often responsible for significant drops in credit scores. A newly posted 30 day late can hurt your score by 60 points or more. It is extremely important that
you at least make your minimum monthy payments each and every month, with no exceptions.
6) Dispute all negative items on your credit reports. If you have say an account in collections, try disputing the account with the credit bureaus as "not mine." The older and smaller a collection account, the more likely the collection agency won't bother to verify it when the credit bureau investigates your dispute.
7) Try not to apply for credit. You should apply for new credit only when it's absolutely needed. Never take store teaser discounts to open a new account. Applying for and obtaining multiple new credit cards over a short period of time will be detrimental to your credit score. Unless you can save a significant amount of money on your purchase over time and can justify accepting a reduction in your credit score, don't apply for credit you don't actually need.
8 Try to avoid inquiries. This goes hand in hand with the previous step 7 above on this list. Every time you apply for any type of credit, the potential creditor or lender will make an inquiry with one or more of the credit reporting agencies. This inquiry will get added to your credit report and will typically remain listed for two years. For the second year, however, the inquiry will only slightly reduce your credit score. If you have multiple inquiries in a short period of time, this can your credit score by 20 points or more and make it difficult to get credit when you really need it.
9) Check your credit report for errors. Your credit scores are calculated based on the information in your credit reports, so certain errors there can really cost you. One of the fastest and easiest ways to quickly raise your credit score is to carefully review all three of your credit reports and correct any erroneous or outdated information that's listed. See if there are any late payments, charge-offs, collections or other negative items that aren't yours.
Check for negative items older than seven years (10 in the case of bankruptcy) that should have automatically fallen off your reports.
10) Try for a goodwill deletion. If you've been a good customer, a lender might agree to simply erase that one late payment from your credit history. You usually have to make the request in writing, and your chances for a "goodwill adjustment" improve the better your record with the company (and the better your credit in general). But it doesn't hurt to ask.
A longer-term solution for more-troubled accounts is to ask that they be "re-aged." If the account is still open, the lender might erase previous delinquencies if you make a series of 12 or so on-time payments.
11) Avoid consolidating balances onto a singlr card. This strategy should be avoided because when you transfer balances onto one credit card you will hurt your utilization ratio and that will hurt your score. You are better off distributing your debt help over several low-interest credit cards.
12) Try to avoid a bankruptcy attorney at all costs. Filing for bankruptcy is one of the absolute worst things you can do and will hurt your credit score unlike any other derogatory. When the bankruptcy is listed on your credit report, you will notice a large and immediate drop in your credit score. But the worst part anout it is that the bankruptcy is almost impossible to get deleted and it will continue damage your credit report and score for up to ten years or more.
Improve Credit Scores Fast!
Negative items older than seven years (10 in the case of bankruptcy) should automatically fall off your reports! If they havent, you can dispoute the item and get it removed easily!
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