Eight Minute Guide to a Credit Score Increase

By: David forer
Follow the simple steps I will outline in this article and you can massively improve your credit score in 30 days. Remember this is a brief 8 minute read and I can't cover everything in detail. I have full explanations in my guide to credit recovery. Also if you read this and that's all you do, it will not help! You must take action to see improvement.

1. Order your credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com. This is a free report you are allowed to get every 12 months. It won't have your credit score but will have all of the information on your creditors and your payment information. Scour this report and look at what is on it. Correct any inaccurate information like birthdays, addresses, employment information, aliases, and social security numbers.

2. Review the negative credit information that is listed on the report. You must correct any errors as soon as possible by disputing them through the credit reporting agencies. These credit reporting agencies have 30 days to investigate and respond to your inquiry. If they cannot verify the negative item your disputing in that time frame they must remove it from your credit report. By removing these negative items you will see a dramatic increase.

3. If you have a lot of open balances, look at your total credit limit versus how much you owe. You want to make sure that your balance is less than 35% of the total credit limit available. For every 10,000 in credit available you want to be using 3,500 as the maximum. Obviously being less than that is great also. There are many ways to do this by increasing credit limits, balance transfer portions of balances, and paying down accounts.

4. Avoid any inquiries into your credit report. If you have multiple credit pulls this can lower your score by up to 5 points per pull (general rule not applicable for every pull). Don't open up several credit cards at once because the newness of the accounts can lower your score as well as the inquiries.

5. Call your creditors and ask them to lower your interest rate. If you have been a customer a long time and have paid well they will do this. Threaten to move over to another card that has a 0% transfer rate. They want you to stay and will help you by lowering your current interest. How does this help to increase your score? Now with the lower payment you can overpay on the account and get rid of the balance. By reducing debt load and paying this off quicker you will bump up your score.

6. If you are in collections or have fallen behind call and talk to the creditor. If you can pay off the collection or late card, offer to pay it off if they delete your collection. They will also lower the payoff if you bargain with them enough. Many times you can also ask them to re-age your account to a good standing with a large payment. Not having the collection or late payment will help your score a lot.

7. Pay on time. I know it's basic but many people just don't do it. After a certain period of time the negatives start to diminish and not affect your score as much. If you pay on time for a while you can call and ask the creditor to delete old negative information. Some will do it because they want to keep you as their customer.

8. Don't close old non used zero balance accounts. One of the best things for a high credit score is older good payed accounts. Shows you have a long credit history and have paid on time. Where this can affect you is when you balance transfer your balance to get a zero APR and you close the other account because you transferred from it. Not only do you have an inquiry but you have taken a seasoned account and replaced with a new one. Make sure to keep those old accounts open for credit report purposes.

9. Set up automated payments if at all possible. Look, we all have good intentions but once and a while are busy lives get in the way. If you have an automatic payment set up then the hiccup will be covered. Sometimes you can bargain with the creditor and get a lower rate for setting up auto withdrawal.

Keep in mind this was supposed to be a thirteen minute guide. I can't go into the full explanations of everything nor give you all of the tips. These simple steps I have outlined are quick and easy and can easily be implemented to raise your score. If you follow these I think you will see a dramatic increase in 30 to 60 days and something can happen sooner. Remember a little effort can reap a large reward. On the other side of the coin, no action and this quick guide becomes useless and you just wasted 8 minutes learning about something that will have no affect on your life.