For anyone who already has a low credit score, then you should already know that banks will happily charge you penalty rates and much higher interest rates on your credit and loans. If your score has dropped too low then you might not be able to get approved for a new loan at all.
Raising your credit score becomes not only a great way to become eligible for lower interest rates, but it could also mean breathing easier with your repayments each month.
Anyone can increase credit score easily. It just takes a little planning and some discipline. You won’t even need to pay ridiculously high fees to some credit repair company when you do it yourself.
Here are some simple steps that will help improve your credit score.
1. Remove negative listings
Some lending companies or banks may neglect to remove negative listings once you’ve made your payments or they forget to report them once you’ve cleared up any disputes you might have had. You are legally allowed to write to the 3 major credit reporting bureaus on your own regarding these listings.
Your letter should request an investigation into any negative listings. Once they receive your letter they have 30 days to look into your inquiry. If they can’t verify any listing on your credit report, then they’ll have to remove it.
2. Payment Timing Counts
Did you know that your bank or credit card company only reports on your repayment conduct monthly? Most people make their bill repayments once a month whenever the bill or statement arrives too.
Did you also know that you are allowed to make your payments on your bills, loans, mortgages and credit cards every time you get paid?
Work out how much your monthly payment amount is and then pay one quarter of this amount each week instead. You’re not paying more money - you’re just paying it more often. This extra repayment activity is reported by the banks positively and helps to increase your score.
3. Catch Up Any OverDue Payments
This is the quickest possible repair solution for anyone with bad credit. Catch up any overdue payments you have with all your creditors. If you don’t have the cash to pay everything off right away, call and negotiate a realistic payment plan that will help you catch up.
When you’ve caught up all your payments, call them and ask if they’ll report to the credit reporting bureaus that all payments have been met.
4. Low Balances, High Limits
If you’ve been diligent about paying off your debts, then hopefully you should have a low balance compared to your available limit.
However if you’re maxxed out and already at your credit limit, it is possible to open new credit accounts with high limits but make sure you keep the balance really low. When your credit score is being calculated, they consider low balances with high available credit shows positive discipline and they’ll increase your score because of it.
Please don’t use this option if you’re the type of person who will simply be tempted to spend all the available credit or you’ll only make your credit score even worse.
