Your credit score determines everything of your future. Whether you get a house, a loan, if you’ll be able to get a credit card and even an apartment. A credit score shows that you’re at least mildly responsible with your money, which proves you’re a great candidate for what you’re applying. It’s important to at least make payments every month to keep your score steady or rising.
How to Find Your Credit Score
There are many free websites like CreditKarma.com, Credit.com, Experian.com, and many others. Mostly every credit card you apply for and get approved for will over a legit FICO credit score every month for free.
Tips to Improve Credit Score
There are many tips to improve credit score and one of them is to continuously pay on time, every month. Your payment history severely affects your credit score whether it’s the minimum payment or completely paying it off.
It’s also worth mentioning that if you do have a credit card, you should only use 30% or keep 70% of the balance on the card. This is to show that you don’t have to spend all at once. If you do use it, make large payments on the card every month to keep a large window of credit.
Having only one credit card open actually shows a negative impact on your credit card, as 3-5 open lines of credit will show that you have established credit. Last but not least, you should always pay down your debts rather than using a credit card to pay off another credit card. While this is a given, sometimes it’s not always possible to do. By adhering to the other rules mentioned above, you can at least use this as a last resort.
What Can Affect Your Credit Rating?
Your credit rating is not only affected by how many lines of credit you have open and your payment schedules, but also your hard credit inquiries, student debt and age of your credit. The younger your credit history, the more affected you’ll be when it comes to things like your credit score and credit ratings.
Each time you apply for a credit card, you receive a hard credit inquiry on your report. It takes two years for each credit inquiry to come off of your report.
Don’t think it’ll improve overnight as your credit score won’t update overnight, as it can sometimes take over a month from when you started to try and improve your credit.
Fastest Ways to Improve Credit
If you know you have direct deposit on a certain day every week, improve your credit score by setting up automatic payments for your credit cards only. If you know you make over $1,500 a month, and you use a credit card with an $1000 limit, you want to make sure you pay this off completely every month to try and improve your credit score 200 points within the course of a year.
When a person is willing to add you as an authorized user to their credit cards, make sure you pay your portion on time but most importantly, make sure they pay theirs on time every month or else you could see your credit dropping.