1. Start Paying Your Bills on Time

The largest core area of your credit score is your payment history.  And not paying on time is going to kill it.  This is the number one best way to raise your credit score.  It does sound simple but individuals struggle with this piece every month.  It often has to do with the lack of a budget or lack of experience managing money.

2. Pay Down Your Debt

If you owe a lot, you need to develop a plan to pay down your debt.  This is the second biggest way to raise your credit score.  Your utilization is 30% of your credit score and being close to your limits will hurt it.  It also comes back to having a budget and developing a plan to use extra money to pay down debt.

3. Avoid Balance Transfers

Many individual use and advocate balance transfers as a way to get out of debt.  The truth is they often don’t work.  It has the effect of just moving the debt around.  Also, since your credit utilization is calculated on an account by account basis, you will can this to rise.  This will put you closer to your limits with that card and hurt your credit score.

4. Don’t Apply For Credit If You Don’t Need It

Don’t think you should apply for every credit card offer that comes to you.  Also, if a store offers you a 10% discount to apply for a store credit card, it isn’t worth it.  Each time you do this it creates a credit inquiries.  These have the ability to hurt or not hurt your credit score.  The idea is if you are applying for new credit all the time you represent a risk and will hurt your credit score.  You should only apply for credit as you need it.

5. Dispute Credit Report Errors

If you are looking of how to raise your credit score, you should start with disputing errors on your credit report.  You don’t think there are any errors.  Well, chances are you are wrong.  Studies have shown that 70% of credit reports have mistakes on them.  The only who is going to catch these most of time is you.  So check for and dispute errors.  This will help to raise your credit score.

6. Check Your Credit Report More Than Once Per Year

Now that you understand that errors are reported about you, you need to be looking for them.  You should look at your credit report a minimum of once per year, but if you really want to stay on top of it, twice would be better.  This prevents recently reported errors from staying on there if you dispute them.

There are even more than these and I will continue add more.  I hope that these are helpful

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2. Maintain a low balances. You should try to keep your balances below 30% to 40% of your credit limit

3. Open new accounts only if you need them.  If you are think that adding a new account will be favorable for your credit score, you probably shouldn’t.  This usually has on effect and it is not proven to give a boost in your credit score

4. Have a credit card – There are many debt gurus that abdicate not to have any credit cards.  In regards to getting a good credit score, you must have a credit card or two.  Without these you will represent a much higher credit risk to lenders.  You just need to be responsible with these lines of credit.

5. Closing Accounts will not take them off your credit report.  Closed accounts will stay on your credit report.  Furthermore, your payment history to that account will be taken into account when determining your credit score.

6. Shop around for a mortgage or car loan, Don’t shop for a credit card. The credit score formula differentiates shopping for a loan or shopping for ten new credit cards.  So you are allowed to shop for a mortgage, but each new credit card will count as an individual inquiry.

7. Don’t open new accounts to get a good initial rate. These new accounts are going to lower you credit score.  This makes the in store initial discount not worth it and they should be avoided.

8. Don’t open a lot of new accounts at once.  If you have a short or long credit history you should not try to get a lot of new credit fast.  This will lower your credit score.

9. Check your Credit report for Errors.  Bankrate.com states that 70% of credit reports have errors on them.  Dispute errors this could give you an initial boost.

10. Don’t lower your credit limits.  If you are not using the credit great, but don’t lower your limits.  This will hurt your utilization.

11. Don’t close old accounts.  This will not only lower your utilization but could hurt your credit history.  Keep the old accounts and use them from time to time to ensure your account doesn’t close it.

12. If you having trouble paying your bills contact your creditors. If you are having trouble making payment, you should call your creditors and try to make any arrangement.  This will protect your credit score if you can come to agreement and give you some breathing room.

13. Get current! If you have a missed payment you must do anything you can to pay it and get current.  This will prevent additional late fees and reduce its severity.

14. Protect your identity. Check you credit report for identity theft this has been on the rise and can wreck a good credit score.  Either pay for credit monitoring service or credit your 3 in 1 credit report every 6 months.

15. Be wary of balances transfers. If you do use balance transfers to consolidation your credit card debt, don’t think you can start spending again.  Pay it off.  The majority of people add this debt back and then some.

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