Review your score
The first thing you should do is to review your current credit score. How can you expect to boost your score if you’re not sure what it currently is? Several companies such as Credit Karma, Quizzle, and Credit Sesame offer free credit scores. Sign up for one of those today.
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.
Negotiate
The next thing that you can do is to negotiate a payment with your creditors. People are busy. 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.
Dispute any 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 three major credit bureaus so that you can dispute it.
Pay bills on time
Paying your bills on time is another thing that you should do to boost your credit score. On time payments account for a little over a third of your credit score. You read that correct, paying on time accounts for a third of your credit score. When I was younger, 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. Eight months after I did that my credit score went up by 168 points. Pay those bills on time people.
How is your credit score? Is it where you want it to be? What did you do to get it there?
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.
I like the idea of negotiating. I need to do that more. I guess it can be uncomfortable at first, but there really is nothing to lose. Thanks for the reminder Jason!
I don’t know what my credit score is. But I always pay my bills on time and I’m trying to get rid of my debt.
We haven’t had any debt for years, not even a mortgage. Ended up unexpectedly needing a car and had the opporunity to get a great deal on a car that cost more than we usually spend. We decided to go for it, and took out a three year loan. My FICO went up. (795 to 805)
Credit scores are good now, but that hasn’t always been the case. I’m still not sure why hubby’s is 20 points higher than mine when all accounts are the same.
I saw the biggest increase in my credit score when I payed off debt. I always hovered in the 730 range. Once I paid off 80% of my debt, my score jumped 100 points to 829.