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How Do I Improve My Credit Score?
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Improving your Score
At some point almost everyone has worried about that missed payment they had a few months ago, or the maxed-out credit card sitting in the nightstand drawer. But don’t worry, there are ways to repair or improve your credit score. Your score can change from quarter to quarter and is based on your most current credit report.
There are seven simple steps that you can take to repair or improve your credit score.
- Check your credit report from time to time. You want to make sure that all the information on your credit report is correct and up to
date. Small inaccuracies could have a big effect on your credit score.
- Keep your debt to credit ratio controlled. The ratio between the amount of debt you have and the amount of credit available can be a big
weight on your credit score. Canceling old, paid off, or unused cards does not help your debt to credit ratio. In fact, keeping them around
can help boost your credit score.
- Your credit score does take time into account; the longer you have had credit, the better. Remember to not cancel an old credit card just
because you aren’t using it; it is actually doing a lot to help your score.
- To help with your credit score, try to keep the balances on your credit cards at 25% of the available credit. If you can’t manage that,
try to at least keep them under 75%.
- Pay your bills on time! This is the best thing you can do to improve and repair your score.
Having too many inquiries on your credit report will damage your credit score. Be very careful when letting people do a credit check;
don’t do it unless you have to.
- It is also not a good idea to keep opening new credit lines just to improve your debt/credit ratio. Some lenders may see this as sign of
financial instability.
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