What are your tricks for raising your credit score?

Question

Other than paying your bills on time, having a few credit cards in good standing, etc. What are some things you can do?

Answer 1

After Hurricane Katrina I added my brother as an authorized user on 4 of my credit cards and it helped his credit score.

This can work for you if you know someone with excellent credit. They do not have to give you any information about the account.It will reflect on your credit report and you won't be able to see the acct #. It will in no way negatively affect their credit.

Best wishes,

pup

Answer 2

Actually having a lot of credit cards can favor you as long as you don't use them.

Having a large credit limit (let's say $50,000) and only a small credit balance (say, $10,000) tells the creditors that you're only using 20% of your credit. This means that you financially stable and this will increase you FICO score.

But here's the caveat... DO NOT use these credit cards!!!!
Simply open an account with no annual dues and never use it!
You may have to use it once a year (some banks require it), but simply pay if off when the balance is due.

I brought my credit score to 759 from 625 within less than a year due to this tactic.

But again... DO NOT use the credit cards!

Answer 3

One trick to quickly raise your scores is to become an authorized user (piggyback) on someone else's credit card(s). Obviously, you want to piggyback on someone with great credit. They don't have to actually give you access to the account, just list you as an authorized user. Their payment record on the accounts they list you on will report on your credit reports. The downside, is if they run into problems or miss payments on those accounts, you bear the brunt of the negatives as well.

Additonal advice:

Make payments on time. Your score is actually a prediction of who is likely to be 90 days late on an account. The lower your score, the more likely you are to go 90 days late.

Keep your revolving balances below 50% of the credit limit; you definitely never want to exceed the limit -- will tank your scores in a heartbeat. If you have a good payment history, simply request a limit increase from your creditors.

The scoring models also favor installment debt over revolving debt. So, keep revolving debt to a minimum.

And, like another poster said -- don't close old accoounts. The scoring models give you credit for the age of your accounts (and likewise ding you for newer accounts). Additionally, one of the scoring computations compares the amount of credit used to the amount of credit you have available (that's why you want to stay below 50% on revolving). When you close accounts, you give up available credit, and it hurts your score.

Finally, it's not always in your best interest to make payments on old collection accounts. As the date of last activity ages, those collection accounts impact your score less and less. If you make a payment, now you've got a recent activity date on that account, and get a "ding".

Answer 4

it quite is important understand why your score is so low till now you may make a plan to develop it. Is it low because of late pays or chargeoffs or is it low because of actuality which you have extra scientific expenses. DO you have any automobile reposessions? Is it one ingredient it quite is hurting your credits or a chain of issues.... strategies would be diverse consistent with what your very own circumstances are. case in point, in case you have astounding non paid expenses, perhaps you may touch those lenders and request (in writing) a 'pay for delete'. meaning which you pay off the bill and that they delete the unfavourable get entry to (in case you think of roughly doing this, i could recommend which you call from an excellent determination which you dont want them bugging the shyt out of you from)

Answer 5

pay your credit card bill quickly. That's how they calculate your score. They don't have access to your financial information.

Answer 6

Do not fall for companies that claim they can "clean" your credit report- it cannot be done. The only thing that will work is time (if you have lates, etc...)

Answer 7

There are attorneys out there that can "clean" your credit score. It costs about $400.

Answer 8

Read some useful credit tips and more on this site to help you with it