Being able to increase your credit score is becoming more and more important as the number of people that default on their accounts rises and the number of methods that a person can use to damage their credit increases. There are some methods that a person can use to increase their credit score that are considered to be fairly simple, but many people do not know what those methods are. Knowing what the options are will help increase the credit score quickly and improve the chances of obtaining approval for additional credit products in the future.
Stop Using Credit Cards
One method that a person can use to increase their credit score easily is to stop using their credit cards and close any accounts that were recently opened. The amount of credit cards that the person has open can affect their credit score by reducing the score by a certain number of points for each open credit card account. When a person has a large number of credit cards that are carrying a balance, it indicates that the person is not using their credit properly and will be risky to lend money to.
Pay Down Balances
One of the easiest methods to increase your credit score is to pay down the amount of credit that you are using. People are considered to be a credit risk once they use more than 50% of their available credit limit, which may be an indication that the person is not using their credit in the proper manner or the person is borrowing more than they can afford. By reducing the amount of available credit used by paying down the balance of the credit cards, the person makes themselves appear more stable to the credit issuing companies.
Review Your Credit History
Another quick and easy method to increase your credit score is to examine your credit history for any mistakes. Experts estimate as many as 35% of the credit histories available will have at least one mistake on it. By carefully reviewing your credit history on a regular basis, you can catch any mistakes quickly, before they turn into larger problems that can devastate your credit score. Any mistakes on a credit history are easiest to correct when they are found quickly and correcting the mistakes may be a lot simpler than you think. The credit bureaus are required by law to investigate any claims of mistakes in a person’s credit history and change any information that is found to be incorrect.
There are a number of methods that a person can use to increase their credit score, but the thing that will be the most important will be persistence. If there are many negative items in a person’s credit history, the only thing that may erase them is the passage of time. Although we all want simple methods to increase our credit score, we must also focus on correcting the things that led to the bad credit score in the first place.