5 Simple Ways to Raise Your Credit Score
Whether you realize it or not, your credit score affects your life in a variety of ways. Obviously, it can determine whether or not you are accepted for home, business, car, student, and personal loans. It can also affect the amount you pay for utilities, your ability to pay with plastic, and whether or not employers decide to hire you.
Perhaps the most important way that your credit score will affect your life manifests itself when you begin shopping for a home. Here are a few of the most important ways that credit can affect your buying experience:
- The size of the mortgage you get accepted for.
- The amount of interest you pay on that mortgage.
- Your ability to rent space in the meantime is also affected — which could put undue pressure and cause you to rush into a purchase that is not ideal.
If you are currently visiting our blog here at Blue Marble Properties, the odds are good that you are considering buying a home in the near future. And if you are reading this article in particular, the odds are also good that you are concerned about how your credit score could affect this purchase! Fortunately, using the following five strategies, you can make a real difference in your credit score over a relatively small amount of time.
- Use payment reminders. Forgetting to make regular payments on time is one of the most avoidable ways that people ruin their credit scores. Setting up automatic reminders — or, better yet, automated payments — can help you avoid this problem and improve your credit with a minimum amount of effort.
- Check your report. You are entitled to one free annual credit report at each of the three major credit bureaus. (Specifically, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.) Also, to address a common misconception: when prospective lenders check your score at your request, this can affect your credit. But when you check your own score, the bureaus cannot hold this against you in any way, and they cannot take this into account when calibrating your current credit score.
- Prioritize Overdue Payments. Each and every payment you make on outstanding debt will improve your credit score. However, paying down overdue debts will give you the largest per-dollar boost to your score.
- Ignore Promises Easy Fixes. Moving debt around to different credit cards or different loans won’t fix anything. Closing/opening a ton of credit cards isn’t going to fix anything either. Debt consolidation companies alone simply aren’t a replacement for smart money management and debt repayment.
- Don’t avoid credit altogether. Credit problems can be frustrating, but skipping out on credit altogether is not the answer, either. If you really want to improve your situation, you need to continue owning and managing debt — at the very least, in the form of a credit card.
Last but not least, it is worth pointing out that no credit score can be completely fixed overnight. Though taking the steps mentioned above can help set you on the right track, building a solid credit score is the result of many months — if not years — of hard work.
Regardless of your current credit score, if you are currently looking to buy a home, Blue Marble Properties can help. Visit us online today to learn more about our current listings, our buyer/seller policies, and much more!