How To Raise My Credit Score

Many of you want to know, "How to raise my credit score?" I have a couple of quick steps to help you raise your credit score.

1. Pay all of your current bills on time - If you haven't been paying your bills and have a few in your past that are in collections, don't worry about those as much paying your current bills. Back when I had a low credit score and was trying to raise it, I spent more than $500 paying off a 3 year old debt, and then 3 months later my car broke down and cost my $700. I had to pay that to go to work and forgot to pay my current credit card on time for 2 months. My credit score rose 20 points for paying off the old loan, then plummeted 50 points for being 2 months of 30 days or later on my current maxed out credit card. Net gain of -30, yeah it sucked, but I learned my lesson.

Your credit score can rise faster based on time, the older the negative item the less the impact, but if you pay the current items on time, your score is more likely to rise than fall.

2. Don't max out your credit cards and pay down the balance - Oh yeah, my second problem was, all my credit cards were maxed out. Credit usage capacity is king, if you have $5000 in overall limits you don't want to be more than 10 percent or $500 in usage on them at all times. At 10% the credit bureau sees you as being able to manage revolving credit and can rocket your score up. Even if you are maxed out, try to get your capacity to 50 percent, or $2500 in my example. Even increasing your capacity a little by not being so close to your max can raise your score.

Oh, also if you have old unused cards, dont cancel them. Those max limits increase your overall capacity and cancelling them will lower it. Just use them for an everyday purchase once a month, then pay them in full every month. Do use them, if not the credit card company can cancel them for non use, lowering your capacity.

You want to know the answer to the question, how to raise my credit score? These are two helpful steps you can take that will not only keep it from falling, but raise it. They are based on personal experience on how I raise my credit score, and info I picked up from MY FICO. This website was so helpful for me because not only did they provide my credit score and credit report, but they guided me on how to raise my credit score, with their forums, advice and even a credit simulator. This showed me what to do to raise my credit score, by simulating what I needed to pay from my credit report to raise my score.

Checkout MY FICO for more information and to sign up, at least go use the credit simulator, it will help a lot.