How can I improve my credit score in a year?

Answer 1

The methods to improve a credit score varies for everyone. It's important to know what your current credit score is and what on your credit report is effecting it. Bankrate.com does a great job of explaining credit scores and how to improve your credit score.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/credit-scoring/20031104a1.asp
How credit scores work, how a score is calculated

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/credit-scoring/20040128a1.asp
Tips for boosting your credit score

Answer 2

The top two ways to raise a credit score are:
1- pay your bills on time
2- minimize your outstanding debt

Other effective ways:
1- correct any and all inaccurate information
2- apply for credit only when necessary (too many inquiries will pull your score down)
3- use credit responsibly (it looks bad if you are constantly consolidating and transferring balances from one card to the other)
4- don't close credit accounts with a long history (by closing those accounts, it makes your debt-to-limit ratio high and you look lik a major risk)

Just so you don't set your hopes too high, let me explain something to you about credit reporting. Let's say you have a Visa card and they report to Experian and Equifax. You pay your bills on time and Visa documents your payment history internally for a period of 90 days. After the 90 days is up, they turn that information over to the two credit bureaus. The bureaus place updated consumer information on what they call 'tapes'. The bureaus only change these tapes every 90 days. In essence, your credit score only has 4 chances to change per year...your score really doesn't change more often than that. If you do not see a drastic score increase within a year, that is why. It might take two years to see a noticeable difference.
Hope that helps!

Answer 3

Good advice from Shelby above...

Data is generally analyzed by the following model:

35% Payment History (pay your payments on time, period)
30% Amounts Owed (% of amounts owed - keep it 19% or below of your total outstanding balance - keep in mind, even if you pay it off every month - but you run your 1,000 limit credit card up to $700 a month, that will hurt you)
15% Length of Credit History (# months since oldest tradeline opened)
10% New Credit (inquiries - don't try to get credit too often)
10% Types of Credit in Use (generally you want a stable amount, with low utilization and a long history)

Also, public records (bankruptcy, etc) will have a big negative impact. Only time will fix those.

Hope that helps some more.

Regards,

Joe...