7 Ways to Boost Your Credit Score

Your credit score is very important. Your score along with your credit history determines what type of loans you may qualify for as well as the amount of interest that you will pay. The higher the score, the better the interest rate will be. People’s scores can fluctuate for different reasons. Bad spending habits and trying to keep up with the Joneses are just a few of them. Today I want to discuss 7 ways to boost your credit score.

Check your score

The first thing you should do is check your current credit score. How can you expect to boost your score if you’re not sure what it currently is? Everyone can receive one free credit report every year from each of the three major credit bureaus. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion are the three major bureaus.

Pay off your debt

You should pay off your debt if you’re trying to boost your credit score. Your debt to credit ratio is one of the major things that lenders look at when deciding what you qualify for. You don’t want your debt to credit ratio to be too high. Find a way to get that debt down as soon as possible.

Dispute errors

If you see any errors on your credit report you should dispute them. Sometimes mistakes do happen. I’ve been lucky enough to have not had any errors show up on my credit report. If you have problems understanding your credit report ask someone that you’re close with to help you go over it. If you do have an error on there, contact one of the 3 major credit bureaus so that you can dispute it.

Negotiate

The next thing that you can do is to negotiate a payment with your creditors. People have busy lives. Sometimes we don’t always pay our bills. You might forget about one of them or you could lose your job and not have the funds to pay it at the time you received the bill. In this age of technology, you’d be surprised that writing to your creditors is very popular when negotiating. You can also try and call the company. The main thing that you want to do is get in contact with them and come up with a plan to pay it off.

Pay on time

Another thing that will boost your credit score is to pay your bills on time. On time payments account for a little over a third of your credit score. I used to pay a few of my bills a couple of days late every month. At the end of 2014 I stopped doing that. Since then my credit score has went up by 168 points.

Use your card less

The 6th item on this list is to use your credit cards less. You don’t need to swipe your card for everything. It all goes back to the debt to credit ratio. You don’t want it to be too high.

Keep cards open

If you pay off a credit card and cancel it, it could possibly drop your credit score. It does that because your available credit goes down. The next time that you pay off a credit card keep it open for a few months so that doesn’t happen.

Does your credit score need a boost?

Jason Butler

Jason Butler is an Atlanta native, as well as businessman, blogger and teacher. Not only is Jason a prolific flipper, marketer, writer and side hustler his number of years in higher education and student support have given him expert knowledge in understanding the economics of the student loan industry.