Is Your Credit Rating in the Dumpster?

Improve It Fast With These Quick Tips

If your credit rating is in the dumpster, it can seem like there isn't much hope left. After all, with a bad credit rating not only are lenders hesitant to loan you any cash because of the risk involved with doing so, but even renters are hesitant to let you utilize any properties or contract out to you... again, because of the high risk involved with lending to you. You can check you credit score withouth credit card from national credit bureaus. I check my credit score free from TransUnion.

The good news is that this doesn't have to be your life for forever. When you take just a few steps toward improving your credit, you can raise your credit scores faster than you could ever think was possible. With consistency, in just a couple years, and sometimes less, you can go from very poor credit to good credit if you know what you are doing. So here are the tips that you need so that you can have a credit rating that is stratospheric instead of one that is anorexic.

Pay On All of Your Bills As Much As You Possibly Can

When you are talking about ways that can either raise your credit score or lower it dramatically, one of the top contenders and offenders in that department is the way you repay your bills. Every time you make a payment on time, you get an addition, albeit small, to your credit score. Every time you don't make a payment on time, you take a much larger subtraction to your credit score. It doesn't seem fair that you lose many more points for a missed payment than you get for a made payment, but that's the way the system works. Just imagine, however, how many points you can gain every month by paying on 10 different credit accounts on time, even if you only got a quarter point for each payment made.

Are You Still Applying For Credit... Even Though You Know You Won't Get It

One of the ways that retailers have figured out how to lure people into applying for credit is to offer a small discount or a small advantage that consumers can take advantage of right away so they feel like they're getting a big advantage... but the advantages really go toward the bank and the retailer long term. Many of these credit lines have an APR that is over 20%, which means the average consumer will pay four to five times more long term for purchases made on that credit. Not only can that hurt the savings account, but that can also dramatically hurt the credit rating you have.

That also means if you're one of those people who apply for the small discount because you know your credit score is bad enough that they would never approve your application in a million years that you're going to be approved, you are still hurting your credit. Every denied application goes onto your credit report and it affects your score in a negative way. In fact, every time there is a query into your credit, it can negatively affect your credit score, so be sure to only apply for the items that you need in regards to your credit and leave all the extraneous stuff alone. L

Do You Just Have a Whole Wallet Full of Credit Cards?

Believe it or not, having all of just one type of credit can dramatically drag down your credit score. If all you are doing is applying for credit cards, not only are you exposing yourself to huge lines of unsecured debt, but you are also putting a good dip into your overall score. The way you can avoid this is to stop apply for credit cards and instead apply for other forms of loans that might be available to you for the things you need. A little variety is a good thing in the credit world... but consistency, when talking about consistency in the same types of credit – not such a good thing.

Do Your Best To Stay Away From the Credit Score Slayers

There are only a few things that can really devastate a credit score. Those would be:

• A foreclosure
•  A deed in lieu of foreclosure
• A short sale on your property
• A bankruptcy
• A loan default
• A court judgment ordering repayment of debt

If you can avoid these pitfalls successfully, then your credit score will never be considered “poor.” You may certainly be able to improve your score by clearing delinquent accounts, but you'll never have to worry about where you stand if these items are off of your credit record.

Improving your credit rating is easy when you know what pitfalls to avoid and what it takes to maintain and improve your score. Before you know it, you'll have great credit and wonder why you felt that need to read an article like this in the first place!

More about credit scores can be found on my website.

Thanks,
Anna Baraniuk.