Your credit rating can be your most valuable asset or your most annoying hindrance. The fact still stands that you can not live comfortably without having a good credit score. There is no way to avoid the issues of your credit score, one way or another your credit score report will become a topic of discussion. Whether you are making one of the two biggest purchases of your lifetime or you are applying for a job in the financial market, you will need to have good credit.
A perfect credit score is something that is fairly easy to achieve but a little harder to maintain. Everyone starts with a good clean slate. Maintaining that clean credit however is difficult to stay on top of, especially during tough economic times. The good news is that if you find yourself falling behind on your credit, there are a few simple steps that you can follow to help raise credit score for the 3 credit bureaus.
The first thing your would need if you are trying to get a higher credit rating is to get a free copy of your free triple score. A copy of your credit report will bring to your attention what you need to do in order to raise your credit score. Once you receive your report, make sure that all the information is correct. Any inaccuracies in your free report can affect your credit rating. A thorough investigation should include checking for accounts that are not yours, accounts that are reporting incorrectly, and even personal information such as addresses.
If you do not have any bad information to investigate with Equifax,Experian, or Transunion, then your next steps should be taking some simple measures to raise credit scores with the 3 bureaus:
Pay Your Bills On Time:
It is much harder to do but it is very necessary that you pay your bills on time, even if you only pay the smallest required amount. Creditors mainly look at you current late payments in determining you credit worthiness, so if you have been late in the past, you can improve your rating by paying on time. Six months of steady payments can raise your score tremendously.
Lower Your High Limits:
The percentage of credit availability to credit balance can cause great damage to your credit score by as many as 100 points. You may be being on time but if all your credit cards are maxed out, a creditor assumes that you don’t have much money available to acquire new credit.
Do Not Close Unused Credit:
Do not terminate any open unused accounts, credit cards or revolving credit accounts due to lack of use. You may not have any plans on using these cards, but if you close them, the good credit history will be removed from your account causing your credit score to drop. Older more established credit looks better than newer credit accounts.
Avoid Filing For Bankruptcy:
Filing for bankruptcy can elimate all your debt in some instances, but the negative aspects to your report damages to your credit will remain for at least 7 years. Bankruptcies look especially bad because it shows that you chose not to pay your creditors at all.
Refrain From Making Unnecessary inquiries:
One inquiry can be responsible for bringing your credit down a few points. Although one inquiry will not be too adverse on your credit score report,but several inquiries can add up and become the difference between being approved for a loan or not. If you notice any inquiries that you did not authorize, you can dispute these inquiries to help raise credit score points.
Improving your beacon score can easily be attributed to following these simple steps. Maintaining your credit score however must be a major priority. You must stay on top of your credit score by getting at lease two credit check report annually and or making sure that you have some sort of credit protection.