4 Smart Ways to Boost Your Credit Score

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Having poor credit can make your life difficult on many fronts. Trying to boost your score may seem like an impossible challenge. Most of us were never taught anything about personal finances and how to maintain a good credit score, so it’s not always a surprise when people land in financial trouble.

Living with a low credit score can rob you of many opportunities. It can be nearly impossible to make any large purchases like a home or a new car when you have low credit. Lenders are not likely to take the risk on a low credit score client when it comes to giving out large sum loans.

The good news is that there are a few ways that you can improve your credit score with some effort. Adding AU tradelines to your report and clearing your collections accounts can help bring your score up. Let’s look at a few of the trusted ways that you can boost your credit score and get back to enjoying life.

AU Tradelines

Your tradelines are the accounts that show up on your credit report. These are the listings of your investments, credit accounts, and collections accounts. Lenders use this information to make decisions about whether or not they will extend credit to you. When you add an Authorized User (AU) Tradeline to your report you can dramatically improve your overall score. Essentially, you pay a company to gain authorized access to their credit account that is in good standing. Having an AU tradeline appear on your report can help you boost your rating.

Accuracy Check

If you have checked your credit score and can’t figure out why it is not improving when you are making all of your payments on time, you may want to take a closer look at your report. It is not unusual for fraudulent or incorrect information to stay unaccounted in your report. To check for accuracy, you will need to request a long version credit report and double-check that all of your listed tradelines are correct. If you spot errors, it’s up to you to contact the creditor in question to clear up the mistake.

Clear Your Collection Debts

If you have a debt that has been submitted to a collections agency, it will have a negative impact on your credit score. Once you have a copy of your credit report, you will need to identify any outstanding collection balances. Paying these debts off and getting them removed from your report will help you to boost your overall score.

Credit Utilization

When lenders are considering a loan, they look at many factors to help them make a decision. One of the most important aspects of your credit score is your credit to debt ratio. This is a simple calculation of how much available credit you have against how much you are using. To help bring your credit score up you need to utilize your credit ratio. To improve your credit score you want to minimize the amount of available credit that you are using.

Life with a poor credit score can limit your options. Take action today and follow some of these tips to help you boost your credit score for a brighter future.