How to Improve Your Credit Score
1. Review your credit report for errors and fix
Review your credit report regularly and identify and correct any mistakes. As much as 1 in 5 credit reports contains incorrect information. Reviewing these mistakes can improve your score. Submit a dispute with the credit agencies (Equifax, Experian, and Transunion) through their websites and receive updates on the progress.
2. Consolidate stubborn credit card balances in a personal loan
Use a low interest personal loan to pay down revolving credit card balances which you are unable to pay off in the next 12 months. This moves the debt from a high interest credit card to a lower interest personal loan resulting in interest savings, a lower revolving credit card utilization rate, and an improved credit mix.
See Personal Credit Loans here:
3.Transfer high credit card balances to a 0% Intro APR card.
This can be an effective way to reduce your interest expense if you have balances you are unable to pay off in the short term. It is important to review the balance transfer details to see what the charge is for transferring the balance. If say you have a 25% interest credit card but are able to transfer the balance to a 0% card for a 3% balance transfer fee, then you are definitely better off during the term of the 0%. Perhaps you can event pay off your balance during that time through some aggressive budgeting.
4. Do not close one credit card when opening another
The key here is to have enough open credit lines with a small amount of balance. If you close cards down then your balance as a % of your credit lines will be much higher. Your credit utilization will look very high. Having more lines open results in a lower credit utilization which increases your score. There is a balance here of course. You also don’t want to fall into the trap of having loads of cards with open balances.
5. Adding Netflix, phone and utilities to your credit report
This is a an awesome way to get credit for things you pay every month regardless. This is a FREE service offered by Experian that gives credit for recurring monthly expenses. It’s called Experian Boost® When you connect your bank, credit card or service provider to Boost, they will look for bills with positive history that you can add to your Experian credit file. It could also instantly raise your FICO® Score!
6. Setup Automatic Payments on all credit reporting debt
It may be okay to miss your mobile phone bill or your Netflix subscription but being late on your credit cards can be a disaster. Late payments reduce your score and stay on your report for 7 years. Just setup automatic minimum payments to be safe. You can always pay more on a separate payment but you will at least never be late.
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