Best Way to Increase Credit Score

It really depends on how much you could spend and what types of cards they are. Have you credit pulled lately? This is the first step to make sure that your credit report is accurate. I would recomend paying all cards to at least 50% and then use the remaining money to pay off the one with the highest interest rate next. Even when you pay off the cards do not close them as this will then end your term of credit with them and will not help your future credit rating. Also once you have paid down these cards keep paying the same amount as you were before until all of the cards have been paid off. Also keep in mind that each company only reports every 30 days to the credit bureaus so you will want to make sure you let at least 30 days lapse before you get it repulled. They are many other ways to help with your credit some are- do not open any new lines of credit (you want no new lines in the last 6 months), do not have your credit pulled by more than 1 type of person in a 60 day period(banks, car company, credit card company, etc.) and use a physical address instead of a PO Box. I hope this helps and please let me knwo if you would like any other tips. Just an FYI I am a mortgage loan officer and have used these to help my clients in the past. Good luck to you and your family and please let me know if I can help.

4 moms found this helpful

Pay off the four & close them, this will improve your credit score the most. Follow Ina G's advise accept do close those accounts. Liz W is right too, opt out that will help. My father is a loan officer & helped me clean up my credit. I have a score of over 800 & I don't even have a job so does my husband. His is slightly higher than mine because he has a job, hard to believe because his is the credit I had to clean up. As a loan officer, he said he looks at credit history & if you have open paid down credit cards you are more of a risk because that is preapproved credit that you could run up again & diminish your capacity to pay off any loans made to you. Idealy You want to pay down your remaining cards and have your balance at 30% or less. Having open unsecured credit makes you a higher risk therefore you will have higher loan interest rates.

I do recommend when you get down to one credit card have it be the Chase Freedom. Call them or look it up online and have them explain the cash back benefits. If you wait until you have 200 reward points and don't renew your cash back until then they will send you a check for $250. I know my dad turned me on to it. I have been using it for the last 2.5 years & now that I am doing a remodel I get that cash back about every 2 months.

Credit cards that give you airline miles or other benefits are counting on you not being able to use or renew them. Everyone can use cash. Basically when you get to the point of paying off your balance every month, they are paying you to use their card.

Good luck, I hope this helps.

T.,
I dont know which ones you should pay off or down BUT I do know that the best way to improve your credit score is to pay off the balance every month. Like for us, we only have one credt card each (and then I have a Target Card...gotta have it:) and we use mine for emergencies only and then his to pay our monthly bills and then we pay it off every month. It is almost like only having to pay one bill:)

Good Luck to ya!

I have also heard that getting your name(s) added to other people's credit cards (people who have good credit scores, like say your parents?) can help. I did this for my daughter, added her name to some of my credit cards. I have been told that the lower credit score of the person who is being added to the card will not affect the higher credit score of the person who already has the card, so there is no risk to that person, as long as they don't give the others an actual card to use! (I hope this makes sense - so, what I did, was call my credit card companies and add my daughter's name to my cards, and they sent me cards for her but I never gave them to her).

You should pay on all the credits cards so that there is at least 30% or more available on them. If you do decide to pay them off, don't close the accounts. It actually hurts your credit score. I am talking from experience. I paid off three cards last year and then closed the acoounts and now my score is lower than it was last year. The only thing that had changed was I closed those accounts. I later talked to a finicial advisior and they told me that it actually hurts your credit. Good luck on your refinance!!!

My Hubby & I are going through the same process, and the advice you received from Mary F is solid/sound and the same we got from our mortgage broker.
Best wishes!

Go to this site. www.optoutprescreen.com It is a site which allows you to stop credit company's from sending you the "pre-approved" applications in the mail. Our financial adviser mentioned that even if you don't respond (rip up and trash) each one sent to you is a "soft" hit on your credit. Apparently 5 soft hits equals a hard hit. I never knew this. We get like 50 a week of those stupid things. It stops them from sending apps. for either a year or forever your choice, just fill out the info required. It raised our score 10-15 points in 60 days!

Well, let me start by saying that I am not a financial adviser - so this is only "basic common sense" advice.
I would start paying of the cards with higher interest rates first AND favor paying off cards in full, rather than chunks of all cards. My reasoning is that in addition to the interest, most cards charge you hefty finance charges on revolving balances, even on smaller amounts, so wiping out cards completely should make more sense. It really depends on your cards and the interest rates and other fees you may be paying on them, I would calculate both scenarios and go with the one that costs you less money.
Also check your credit report to make sure that information on there is correct, and if not, ask for corrections to your report. You can also try to have old bad credit removed if it has been longer than a certain amount of years (7/10 it depends).
Also make sure to pay all of your bills on time and not let any checks bounce - it makes no sense to direct all your money into credit card debt, if that means that you can't make payment on other bills. Bounced checks and late payments influence your score negatively.
In addition, do not close the paid of cards, a large part of your credit score is the ratio of available credit/debt.

We paid down our debt a couple of years ago and above is how we did it... it is very liberating and you save A LOT of money.
Good luck!

I've heard that maintaining a balance of less than 50% your total available credit for each card and making all your payments on time will increase your credit score in time. Especially for your accounts that have been open the longest. suze orman as the last poster mentioned is a terrific resource.

I know this one! LOL My husband and I want to buy and house, and I got good advice from realtors/creditors. Pay down to under 50% on all six, and then NEVER be late on your substantially lowered payments. The longer you pay on time, and keep the balances going down, the better your credit score will be. Good Luck!!

Well it is better to have 6 cards at say $1000, then having one at 50, one at 500, one at 2,000, and one at like 5,000... Ideally you want the amount on the card to be 30% or less. So if you can get them all down to close to 35% that would be a big help. Now having 6 credit cards is a lot and you should try and knock that amount down when you can but for short term try and lower the amounts on each card. Now I am not a paid financial adviser, but I have experience and have done a lot of research as to keep our total debt (without counting house) under $10,000, which keeps our credit up high.

Good for you for thinking and looking into the best options.

I would say that completely paying off and closing 4 is the best option. Having lots of cards open counts against you even if your balance is low because you have so much available credit. If each of those 6 cards have a $10,000 limit but only $3,000 on each card, your actual debt would be $18,000, but they would count $60,000 against you since you could hypothetically go out a day later and spend that amount. If you only have 2 cards open, and are maxed out at $10,000 each, giving you $20,000 actual debt, that would look better than the $18,000 because you don't have the option to spend any more.
I hope that all makes sense. Close as many cards as you can and don't accept high credit limits unless you have to.

I would check out Suze Orman's website to see if she has any info that would help. http://www.suzeorman.com/

But, based on some of the stuff I heard her say - your best bet might be to pay big chunks of each one. You want the open credit out there for them to check - but just not tons of amounts.

Best of luck!

We just completed our home refinance. We took an offer from our existing lender to do a low-fee refinance at a lower interest rate. Although the mortgage consultant (a Chase employee)thought everything would be ready to close within a couple of weeks, it actually took a full 4 months. The new government regulations are very stringent, and require all sorts of supporting documentation. So, you may actually have about 6 months to improve your credit score. The mortgage consultant ran a credit report right before closing, to see if our score had gone higher. If it was higher, he would report it to the loan officer. If it was the same, or lower, he wouldn't report it. The loan fees we were charged were based on our credit score.

My husband and I have always had excellent credit. We almost never carry a balance, so we pay everything off in full every month. But, we do have numerous credit card accounts; possibly as many as 30 between us. Having that many accounts in good standing did not lower our credit score much, if at all. I don't think that closing your accounts will work in your favor. Paying them down, or off, though, is a great idea. Financially, it makes the most sense to pay off the accounts with the highest interest rates first. You will probably have an extra 2-3 months while your refinance is being processed to finish paying off your credit cards. Then, I encourage you to avoid buying things with your credit cards, unless you can pay off the balance in full each month. Otherwise, you end up paying an 18-21% additional cost on all of your credit purchases. Something that seemed like a great deal isn't really a deal if you pay that interest "premium" for it. Besides, if you think it's worth a yahoo to have only 2 cards with a balance on them, imagine how great you'll feel as you watch your savings account, IRA, or your college fund for your children grow.