Three Quick Ways to Raise Your Credit Score

credit report

Unfortunately, I don’t know any way you can raise your credit score to a high enough number today to get what you want out of it, but I do know a few ways you can raise it pretty quickly. Most people spend years working hard to raise their credit score, but we have a few suggestions that might raise that number a bit faster than that; aside from ordering your credit report and fixing any mistakes or errors you find on it, of course. It’s not easy to raise your credit score when you’ve done significant damage to it, but it is easy to raise that number a bit faster than you might imagine if you are good at what you do.

Pay down debt

It’s a pretty common sense kind of concept, but it works. If you pay off your credit card debt today, you’ll see your score go up pretty fast. That’s because you immediately look better when you don’t owe people any money. Pay those cards off and watch the numbers rise.

Pay the bills

It’s all right if you get home from vacation and forget that you didn’t mail that mortgage check or credit card payment before you left. Now it’s a day or two late and you are panicking; don’t. Of course you need to pay your bills by the due date, but most creditors will not report a missed payment to the credit bureaus until your payments are 30 days or more late. Pay them on time and your score goes up – or at least prevents it from falling by 100 points.

Keep accounts open

Perhaps you think that if you want a higher credit score, you need to cancel old cards without any balance. Do not do this; you need those old cards on your account. You need them there so that creditors can see that long, good credit history and so that you don’t minimize your available credit and make your outstanding debts look bigger.

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