Use These Four Tips To Improve Credit

Have you ever gotten a mortgage or car loan? Then you probably know the importance of a good credit rating. Having a mortgage rate of 7% versus 5% is a huge amount of money over the life of a 15 or 30 year loan. You will save yourself thousands of dollars every year if you have good credit. Here are 4 tips to improving your credit rating.

1. Pay off credit cards

Make a list of all of your credit cards and their balances. You need to do your best in getting these balances paid off. Tear up the cards if you have to. Don’t make the minimum payments as you will probably never get them paid off that way. Be disciplined in how you are going to get them paid off. If you have more than one credit card it would be best if to pay of the largest amount before paying off the smaller amount on other credit cards.

Credit rating agencies like to see borrowers with a low balance compared to the total credit limit. If you have a $5,000 limit your score will improve with a zero or low balance versus having a balance for $4,800.

2. Always Pay Debt Obligations On Time

Being a few days late is understandable and can happen to anyone. What you want to avoid is being 30 days late. If you have a decent credit score one 30 day late can drop your score by over 100 points. It seems a bit unfair but unfortunately that is how it works. If you cannot make a payment call your credit card company and tell them that you will not be able to make a payment. Ask them if they can refrain from reporting the 30 day late.

3. Remove Late Payments

Obtain a copy of your credit report and look who is reporting late payments. Call those credit cards companies or lenders and ask them to remove any or all late payments. If you are a good customer they just might do it. I was on vacation and missed a credit card payment one time. I called the company and told them the story and reason behind the late payment. They agreed to remove it.

4. Keep all of your credit cards

Applying for a new credit card account can hurt your scores. Oddly enough, moving balances from several cards to one card can hurt your score as well. It is better to have lower balances on several cards than one big balance on one card. Again, lenders look at the percentage of debt you are using on a particular loan. They don’t like it if you are using a high percentage.

Following this 4 steps will help improve your credit scores. These work best if your score is low to mediocre. If you have a score above 700 you may not see a huge increase in credit score. The bottom line is simply to spend what you can afford, do not be late on payments, pay off your balances quickly, fix any errors on your credit report and don’t stiff anyone. Do this for a long enough period of time and you will have good credit.

Slade Tanner – Mortgages in Sarasota