A high credit score is your ticket to procuring funds, owning a house, requisitioning for a new credit card, or renting an expensive machine. Your credit score is built up slowly and in a phased manner taking into account your complete professional, financial, legal, and repayment backgrounds. It is obvious, then, that boosting your credit score also involves careful calculations and measured steps.
Nevertheless, if you find that your current credit score is unusually low, here are some of the finest ways to enhance the same:
1) Thoroughly Scrutinize Financial Statements Before lamenting about your credit score, you would do well to check if it’s indeed low in the first place. For this, you are firstly advised to minutely study the credit report prepared by the rating agency and scout for errors such as incorrect amounts, superfluous entries, double postings, and wrong late-payment calculations. A similar scrutiny of bank statements and credit card accounts is also recommended. If these gaffes have indeed occurred and resulted in a poor credit score, you ought to immediately approach the concerned authority and resolve the issue with them.
2. Lessen Your Dependence On Credit
You would concur that this is the logical thing to do. By decreasing your credit burden, you will owe lesser amounts to banks and other financiers thereby freeing up your monetary resources. Lower debts and obligations are bound to impress credit agencies resulting in a higher credit score for you. In this regard, you are instructed to:
a) Control your credit card usage.
b) Frame a revamped personal budget showing the sources of funds and your intended payments. You should then aim to settle dues involving higher interest rates first.
3. Advanced Credit Card Guidelines
Additional credit card strategies are worth pointing out:
a) Remember not to close redundant credit card accounts if your inherent repayment history is commendable. Doing so will needlessly vitiate your score.
b) Do not open fresh accounts impulsively – this will invite further credit examination and marginally lower your credit score.
c) Choose a wide variety of revolving credit accounts like MasterCard, Visa, and Sears to demonstrate credit prudence.
4. Start Paying All Your Bills Before Time
This is one of the fastest means of shoring up your credit score. By paying your debts well within the due dates, you send a strong signal to the lender community (and rating agencies!) about your financial and repayment status. Note that this policy applies to general dues and may not apply to home loans where some financiers impose penalties for pre-payments.
To help you pay your dues within time, you can opt for the following methods:
a) You can have your banks send text and email payment prompts for all categories of dues. Nowadays such payment prompts can be easily configured on the internet via your online bank accounts.
b) You may also instruct your financiers to automatically debit your account with the monthly charges as and when they become due. This will save you the bother of constantly monitoring your transactions.
5. Opt For Refinancing
Loan refinancing can prove a valuable instrument to raise a flagging credit score. Refinancing allows you to opt for favorable credit terms, derive a lower interest rate, diminish your monthly expenditure, and boost your financial position. These propitious aspects will surely lead to a heightened credit score in the near future.
6. Hire Professional Assistance
Credit management is a complex field requiring sound financial acumen and updated knowledge. If you are unfamiliar with credit dynamics, hiring the services of professional credit administrators may help to enhance your score owing to their documented expertise in the domain.
7. Forsake Insolvency or Foreclosure
Lastly, you should assiduously avoid opting for any new foreclosure or insolvency proceeding as these will unnecessarily reflect on your credit report and impair your score.
This is a guest post by Dazzle Rogers of workwelltogether.com, a site that offers savings and current information on home cable and internet, as well as Comcast.com services.