How can i improve my credit rating?

Question

How can i improve my credit rating?

Answer 1

I found the best way is to use a catalogue. I.e littlewood or the like. Buy an item and then pay it off. The more you buy and pay off on time the better your rating. May take a while if you can only manage a few items at a time, but this shouldn't matter too much. Don't go getting £££/$$$ on it, credit rating will not go up quicker. This way you get something for your money and are not in that kind of debt like you would be if you took out a loan.

I had no rating till I did this. I only managed to get one catalogue to sign me, the others refused me. Once I had been going for a few months I got loads of offers from them companies asking if I wanted their catalogues too.

The companies just want to see you paying what is owed and on time.

Good luck.

Answer 2

There's more to improving than just paying what you currently even - (even though this is a good thing) you need to acknowledge what has gone wrong before too.

1. Order your credit reports from the 3 bureaus

www.equifax.com

www.experian.com

www.transunion.com

If you're ordering for the first time, get your score (for a fee) from Equifax as their scoring matters most.

2. Make copies of your report and put the originals in a binder. On the photocopied reports use a highlighter and check for any incorrect, outdate, false, etc...info

3. Download a dispute letter(s) from the credit bureaus website and list anything that is wrong. Mail them to their office(s). They have 30 days to reply.

4. If they will not remove something that is not yours or too old (> 7 years) as them for a debt validation. This may take an additional 30 days.

5. Once the 'baddies' come off, take care not to let any of your other accounts fall into that predicament.

6. If you haven't already make sure your existing accounts are current and paid on time ALWAYS.

7. Get a secured credit card with www.capitalone.com or www.mastercard.com for like $500-1000 or more if you can and use it sparingly. Charge like $50 on the card each month and pay it in FULL and on TIME. Make sure you do this for a minimum of 6 months so that you estabish a positive repayment history.

8. Problem with just letting them (collections) 'fall off' is that they may never. You may get sued before that...that's where you suddenly get a summons to appear in court and a judgment for collection against you.

For collection items...pay them but get a 'pay for delete' from the collection agency in WRITING...they'll delete it after you pay and it will help your credit score.

Answer 3

Join a Credit Union and establish a regular Savings account.

Answer 4

Borrow money from the bank or obtain a credit card.

Answer 5

Don't live beyond your needs and don't owe any thing to any one, or you will never get a good credit rating. Pay on time.

Answer 6

Pay the 60 dollars installment to get a low max high interest credit card then charge 100$ on it and pay the minumum balance on time for a year and will raise your credit rating good.  Just don't be late.

Answer 7

Yes, it's possible to fix your credit yourself. With a little hard work and perserverance, and patience, you could get it back up there. What you have to understand is what makes up your credit score:

1. Payment history- 35%

2. Total debt owed to avialable credit ratio-30%

3. Length of time establishing credit-15%

4. Types of credit established-10%

5. Inquiries and New accounts-10%

With that in mind, this is some steps that you should do in order to get yourself in a better financial position to rebuild your score:

1. Open a checking and savings account if you haven't already- while this won't directly affect your credit score, it does many things. It re-establishes a relationship between you and a financial institution, which by being an customer in good standing, could help make it easier to get approved for credit cards and loans. Most importantly, by opening a checking account

it gives you the single most powerful tool in building credit, to help pay your bills on time, especially if the bank offers online billpay.

2. Gather ALL your credit reports- It's important to know exactly what's on your reports. A lot of times, people believe that their credit is so bad, that they don't bother to check their reports for mistakes, and trust me, mistakes DO happen. The credit bureaus don't get paid to be accurate, they get paid to report. It's important that you gather reports from all 3 agencies to determine not just who and how much you owe, but to make sure that what's on there is even correct. If you do happen to find something that you're sure is not right, you should dispute with all 3 agencies, they all have an online dispute feature in which you can dispute the item. Once you've made sure that there's no inaccuracies on your report, then you should arrange your debts from most recent and lowest amount to oldest and highest amount. Debts that are newer than 2 years are hurting your score the worst and should be handled first. What you should know that just paying off debts, especially collection debts will not help your score. A "pay to delete" or "deletion payment", which is a payment in exchange for removing it from your report completely. I posted several links that explains this more in detail.

http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/set...

http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/neg...

http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/Can...

http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/Act...

http://www.creditinfocenter.com/debt/deb...

If you're sucuessful, this will help your score.

3. Open new credit- I had mentioned in #1, about opening a checking and savings account with a bank or credit union, I'm going to tie that in with what I'm about to say. Some major banks (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, USBank, Orchard Bank) and some credit unions offer secured credit cards, which are credit cards that require a deposit to establish credit. Whatever you deposit would be the credit line, for example, if you deposited $300, then your credit line would be $300. The deposit isn't used to pay for what's purchased on the card, you would still need to either pay in full or make monthly minimum payments. The deposit is used only if the account becomes delinquent and goes to collections. A couple of good things is that you can increase the credit limit by adding to the deposit, which can help your score because it creates a much needed cushion between the total debt that's owed and the available credit, and also the deposit is sometimes linked to a savings account which earns interest while you're building credit, so the deposit isn't just sitting there. A good way to build credit with the card is to make small purchases ($20/month max) and pay it off on time every month, while adding to the deposit. Usually after a year or so, of paying it off on time, the card either converts to a regular card or it's upgraded to a better card, and most importantly the deposit isn't needed anymore and it's given back. My suggestion would be to open another secured card and repeat the process or open 2 at a time, which would speed things up. If you make small purchases, pay it off and increase the limits, that will really help your score. In the end, you'll have 2 credit cards with decent limits and an emergency fund from the deposits.

4. Enroll with PRBC- PRBC is America's Alternative Credit Bureau, providing a helpful service to the over 50 million people with limited or no credit history. If you pay your monthly bills on time, PRBC can help you build credit to qualify for a mortgage and better interest rates.On-time payments for the following bills are not reported to the traditional credit bureaus:

Rent

Cable

Phone

Daycare

Insurance

Electric

Natural Gas

Cell Phone

The only time your payments for these bills are reported to the other credit bureaus is if they're missing or late.With PRBC, your on-time payments count. You build credit for paying your bills on time, even if you have no credit history. PRBC has teamed up with Fair Issac, the creators of the FICO score to introduce the FICO expansion score which helps people build credit. Here's a link that explains more in detail:

http://www.fairisaac.com/fic/en/product-...

In closing, just a few more things to keep in mind.

-Don't spend more than 30% of your combined available credit on all your cards.

-Only apply for credit when necessary.

-Pay on time

Hope this helps...

Thanks for reading and...

Good luck!

Answer 8

Don't charge more than you can pay when the bill comes. You should just use it for convenient and like a check you have the money to pay your bill when you use the card. You could keep a ledger of your charges. Do not charge more than 20% of the available credit on your credit card. If your card has $1000. credit available you can only charge no more than $200. Less is fine. You could just use your card for a gas purchase each month. You could get one of the reward cards and make money off your card instead of paying them they can pay you. If you are paying each month. Chase Perfect card has 3% off on gasoline and 1% on all other purchases. I like this card because nothing adds up over time. It is a rebate card and the next month the reward is subtracted from the account. That would make $4.00 a gallon gas cost .12 cents less per gallon.

Answer 9

People aren't very helpfull on here huh? First off, never pay your bill late. That is a given, for most people. Second, pay more than the minimum payment. That helps A LOT. Because of doing that, they offered me a 5 % APR. Originally it was 22% :) Pay twice your minimum if you can. Or as much as possible. Do not inquire about other credit cards. Keep the one(s) you have. Do not cancel any either. Call and tell them your thinking of canceling, they might offer you a good deal to keep you as a customer. There is a word for that but I forgot. If you have a large balance, stop using your card for a  couple months. If you keep a large balance, it reflects negativly. Thats about it. good luck.Oh and dont inquire about or get a loan.Unless you know you can pay it off quickly, in that case, it will help your credit rating.

Answer 10

Open a credit card account but use it very SPARINGLY. Like maybe once a month buy groceries on it and then when you get your paycheck, pay off the total amount so you don't get a finance charge at the end of the billing cycle. Just keep your card and use it once in a while and make sure never to go over the limit. Good standing on an open credit card will give you a better credit score within a year.

Answer 11

To raise your credit score you need to do two things:

1 - add positive things to your credit records.  Such as paying your bills on time!

2 - Remove negative things from your records.  These may be mistakes made by the credit report companies or bills you haven’t paid!

If your problems aren’t too bad or too complicated than you can do this yourself.  This review site gives you e-books to explain the process and guide you through it:

<>http://www.onlinebestinformation.com/cre...

if your problem is complex - or you just don’t have the time or patience to do it yourself then you will want to use a credit repair company.  This review site will guide you to the three best companies to use:

<>http://www.onlinebestinformation.com/cre...

Good Luck!

Answer 12

one of many ways. you can pay off your debts.easier said then done i know. try and get a credit card. or there are companies out there who charge a small fee and clear your name on register and then you can apply for credit again however if you do it this way make sure you keep up with all payments on new debts as you can only do this once. hope this helps.

Answer 13

if your just starting out trying to establish credit...try getting a department store card or a gas station credit card or any kind of credit card really and charge only a small amount say $50/month that you know you can pay off in full at the end of them month and you will slowly but surely build up your credit. the older you get the more things you will need credit for such as a car loan and such and the longer you have an account in good standing the better it will be for your credit rating.

Answer 14

Pay off your bills. Pay the whole amount each month on your credit cards. Pay your bills on time and don't borrow too much money.

Answer 15

There are five areas that go to make up your score, and they are weighted differently - some areas are more important than others and have a bigger effect on hurting or improving your FICO score:

1. Payment History = 35%

2. Amounts Owed = 30%

3. Length of Credit History = 15%

4. New Credit = 10%

5. Types of Credit Used = 10%

So, the 10 best things you can do for raising credit scores are:

KEEPING A CLEAN PAYMENT HISTORY

1. Pay on time. At 35%, payment history is the largest area of concern to lenders. The only thing that will damage your score more than late payment is total non-payment.

2. Did I mention pay on time?

AMOUNT OWED - NOT TOO MUCH (BUT NOT TOO LITTLE)

3. Ideally keep your debt to credit ratio to 30% or less. This means only using 30% of your available credit per card.For example, if you have a card with a credit limit of $1,000, keep the balance at $300 or less.

4. This holds true per individual card but also for your debt to credit ratio overall. This means you need to pay down debt - not just move debt around. This is a frequently misunderstood aspect of how to raise credit scores. You will save money by doing the 0% APR balance transfer dance, but you will not improve your FICO score.

LENGTH OF CREDIT HISTORY

5. A longer average account age will boost your score. This means that opening new accounts can lower your score because a new account will bring down the average age.

6. Point 5 above has a rider - if you have poor credit you need to re-establish your credit and rebuild your credit. This means taking a hit in the short term by applying for as much new credit as you can get so that in the long term your score will improve.

NEW CREDIT DOs AND DON'Ts

7. Don't constantly apply for new credit. If you are shopping around for credit, try to squeeze the applications into a short time frame. FICO scores distinguish between a search for a single loan and a search for many new credit lines, in part by the length of time over which inquiries occur. If you are just starting out building your credit, a lot of inquiries will lower your score more than someone with a longer history.

8. Do request a copy of yor credit report regularly. Requesting a copy of your own credit report does NOT damage your credit score. This is an Internet myth. Requesting your own credit report or credit score from an authorized provider does not set off alarm bells the way that multiple requests sometimes does.

TYPES OF CREDIT USED

9. Mix it up. A combination of revolving credit such as credit cards and installment payments like a car loan is ideal.

10. Avoid store cards such as Target, Home Depot and so on. These count as lines of credit as opposed to revolving credit like regular credit cards. Store cards are not given much respect by credit scorers. In the long run, the convenience or in-store discounts will not make up for being refused a VISA card or a prime mortgage rate later on down the track.

Answer 16

pay your bills