How to Improve Your Credit Report Score

Steps

1. Don't compulsively check your score, or respond to all those "pre-approved" credit card offers you get in the mail and even online. It's easy to think - "What can it hurt to apply? They say I'm already approved." Well, it can and DOES hurt. Each time one of the Credit Bureaus gets an inquiry, your score goes down a few points.
2. Don't jump from card to card. If you "transfer your balance" - a scheme that doesn't hurt you, and gets you 0% interest on your balance for a period of time, sometimes as long as a year - don't close the old account. Your credit history looks better to the Credit Agencies if you have long-standing, established accounts. This looks good even if many of your accounts are never used anymore.
3. Get married! If you examine two people with very similar credit histories, the one who is married will have a markedly higher credit score than the single person. Strange, but true!
4. This you really can't do anything about - be older. Age is another personal characteristic that the credit reporting agencies factor into their ratings. Older is better. Even though you cannot magically increase your age (and who'd really want to do this, anyway?) it is nice to know that as time goes by, your credit score automatically improves.
5. Don't move a lot. If you physically reside at the same address for a long time it is better for your credit history than if you move frequently.
6. Buy a home! Owning is viewed as WAY better than renting. This is not a difficult, or particularly expensive thing to do.
7. This is probably the most important action you can take: pay your bills on time!! If your credit history has even a few "late pays" (or worse yet - a few "no pays") your credit report scores will plummet.
8. Check your credit report for credit cards that are listed under your name that may be jointly held by others. For instance, former spouses and business partners. Their bad credit influences your credit. Get your name off of those things. Close other 'dead' credit accounts that you don't use.
9. Dispute things on the credit report that are 'wrong'. You can generally get one 'bad thing' off of each credit report every year. Keep at it consistently if you used to be a 'bad person', at least as far as the credit card companies are concerned.
10. 'Paying off' loans increases your score. Oddly enough, occasionally refinancing and trading in cars with loans on them 'pays off' loans, too. If you do refinance, do it for no points and a lower rate.
11. Having high available debt and low indebtedness helps a lot. In other words, if you have lots of available credit, and little or manageable debt, that looks better than being in hock up to your eyeballs, or just having no established credit at all.
12. If you pay off your credit cards in full anyway, consider paying them off a day or two before the billing cycle is closed (check online for the day, and the current total). That way, your bill will show a very small or even negative amount, which gets reported to the credit scoring institutes. This increases your credit score up to 50 points (everything else unchanged).

Video

Tips

• When you apply for a loan, you can demand a copy of the credit report right then. They will usually offer it to you anyway.

Warnings

• MOST services that advertise that they will give you a free credit report are scams. They will stand there between you and the credit companies (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) in order to harvest your data 'for you' and then sell the data to marketing firms.
• The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) say you are entitled to a free annual credit report.
• The official site formed by the credit reporting agencies to check your credit report is at: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/
• Equifax and Experian will both let you check their reports directly from their own web sites. TransUnion makes you join a 'trial service' that lets you keep looking at the same report for 30 days, but it's a "do nothing and join" service, so you'll need to cancel it instantly after you get your report, lest you forget and begin getting billed $10/month for the privilege of routinely seeing that which doesn't change very much. (See 'External Links'). If you come through the official http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ site, you don't need to cancel anything.

Sources and Citations

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score
• http://annualcreditreport.com/
• http://www.experian.com/
• http://www.equifax.com/
• http://www.transunion.com/
• http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html

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