Saturday, November 4, 2006

How to Raise Your Credit Score at an Ease?

Your Credit Score is a magical number that indicates your creditworthiness to potential lenders, banks, landlords, insurance companies, and even to some employers. There are various ways to increase your credit score in 30 days. Increasing your credit is not a big deal. With a little foresight and due diligence, you can reap giant rewards and increase your credit quickly. But with black marks like a bankruptcy or foreclosure in your credit reports can stand as a barrier in raising your credit score. Here is a list of few steps you can take to raise your score at ease-

· Paying down your credit card balances and reducing your overall debt on your credit report is an effective way to raise your credit score quickly. By doing this you lower your total balance owed and also lower the total amount of interest you pay, and in turn increase your credit score at the same time.

· Make all your payments on time. Delinquencies have a serious impact on your credit score. If you have overdue bills, make plans to get rid of it quickly.

· Keep a check on your credit limit. To have a good credit score, you should possess about 30% or more of the available balance on your credit cards available for use in emergencies. To increase your score try to keep a gap between what you owe and what you can still use.

· Don’t close your unused or old credit cards accounts. As a long credit history helps in increasing your score and plays a vital role in calculating your score.

· Check your credit report occasionally and see if your report is correctly reporting your credit limits for your cards. If you find any errors immediately clear it up, such as incorrect credit limits, late payments, or collection items that aren’t yours.

· Get a secured credit card. Without a credit history and with a low credit score, a secured card can help you build credit if it reports to the credit bureaus. For this you have to upfront a security deposit of at least a couple hundred dollars, which the card issuer holds as collateral. The bureaus uses your high balance as a proxy for your credit limit, which makes you look that you are maxed out.