Of course, having a low credit score can be incredibly stressful and limiting. Having a low credit score means that you’ll struggle to get approved for loans, whether that be a personal loan or a mortgage home loan, and it also means you might struggle to get approved for new credit cards even. So if you find yourself in a place where it would benefit you to increase your credit score, because maybe you’re trying to land a loan or you want to get your first credit card, it can be difficult to get started.
Here are some tips that you can keep in mind for raising your credit score at least 200 points.
- Pay your bills frequently and on time. You can make multiple smaller payments throughout the month on your credit card debt, which will help you beat some of the interest levels in your credit card and get ahead of it. You can also use your credit card as if it functions in the same way as a debit card, meaning that whenever you charge something your card, you can pay it off right away. Your score will boost if you are able to slowly chip away at the debt and show that you’re actually getting out of debt, versus letting it pile up until you reach your payment due date.
- Don’t close old or unused cards. Even though it is tempting to get rid of the accounts for your cards that you no longer use, you would actually be hurting your credit score if you were to do that. It would make your credit score look like it’s younger than it actually is, and having an older credit score benefits you. However, you don’t want to only a few accounts that all have similar amounts of debt on them because that can hurt your score.
- Pay bills on time no matter what. You don’t want to falter here; you won’t be able to improve your credit score if you’re unable to make your payments on time. Each time you miss a payment, you get a negative hit on your score.
- Don’t remove old debt on your credit report. Similar to keeping old credit cards open, you don’t want to remove any old debts from your report, like paid off auto loans or paid off student loans. While your report will remove any negatives, like old missed payments or certain dark marks on your report, after a period of time, your paid off debts won’t be removed. And you don’t want them to be removed because it looks better to show that you have paid off large swaths of debt on time. And boosting your credit score is all about making sure you look good to future financers.
- Only look at your score sparingly. The more hard credit checks you do on your account, the more it will ultimately hurt your account over time. Soft credit checks, such as a check through a site like Credit Karma, won’t hurt your score, but the report won’t be super accurate. When you do a hard check, such as through a landlord or loan provider, then multiple checks will hurt your report over time.
