Improving Credit Score

What are the best ways to improve your credit score? Right now I'm sitting at a 716 @ 21yo.

 

Pay credit cards on time.

Pay any other recurring bills on time. (ex: phone, hydro, etc.)

Don't request your credit score more than once per year. (each request usually lowers it slightly)

 

In addition to the above post make sure you don't have a ton of credit cards even if they have no balance on them, as it counts against you.

Keeping all your debt centralized in a mortgage and maybe a credit card or two is good, its not good to have a bunch of credit cards with debts on them.

 

So looks like I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing then. In addition to paying everything off on time, I just took out a loan for the sole purpose of paying it back. I could pay it back tomorrow if I wanted to, but I'll pay an extra couple hundred bucks to get a better credit score.

 

Taking out a loan no matter if you pay it back or not will lower your credit score. It's better to avoid it if it's possible. Other options too, but 716 is a pretty solid score.

 

Wrong. Requesting your credit score is a soft pull and does nothing to affect your credit. Having a lender pull your credit (For example, applying for a credit card) is a hard pull and decreases your credit score slightly for the next 1/2 years (Depending on which version of FICO scoring is being used).

Not quite. In the short run, a loan will drop your credit score, but in the long run it'll be beneficial, if you don't miss a payment or pay late.

Creditors like to see a good mix of credit. They don't want someone who's credit history is comprised entirely of credit cards. Someone who took out a 10k car loan and paid it off looks much better than someone who only has credit cards.

 

The biggest thing to help is the average length of time for credit accounts. Loans will count against you until 50%+ of the balance is paid on time.

 

huh, 716 is really a high score. I'm fighting somewhere between 640-660. So, I may not be the right person to advice you on score wise. But yeah, as I had a lot of appliances to be purchased often, my credit score generally goes down.


Anyways, from my research, here is what I've for you.

1.Don't pull your credit score ranking more than once as it'll lower your score.
2.Taking loan to increase your credit score is not recommended as you'll end up lowering your score since nobody could give a solid information whether credit score gets increased for taking a loan. So, better avoid it.

 

It completely depends where you're from as i know Austrlian/UK/US are very different with how the monitor credit.

I'm from the UK and here are a few tips you may want to check

1) Does your credit file have your Electoral role details?
2) In older your accounts the better, for example i have been with my 3 banks for over 10 years. That is a big bonus for me.
3) A credit card will raise your score considerably over the next few months providing it's kept up to date
4) Make your footprints are checked. Don't have to many credit checks.