Three Things you can do to Improve Your Credit Score Now

This series of articles has to do with improving credit score. If you have problems with your credit score, there are many doors that are not open to you. Credit score is important for anyone who uses credit for any reason. When you purchase items on credit, your credit score determines whether you pay a high finance charge, or whether you pay a low finance charge. Most people finance big ticket items such as cars and homes. If you have a poor credit score you may be forced to spend a lot more than you would if your score was good. Or, even worse than that, you may not be able to get approved for loans at all.

There are three things that you can do now to improve your credit score immediately: be punctual when paying bills, keep old accounts open, and don’t take on unnecessary new debt.

Pay your bills on time
The first thing you can do to improve your credit score immediately is to pay your bills on time. Every month when your bills are do you must pay them on time. Don’t just try to pay your bills before the grace period ends. Make every effort to get your bills paid on or before the due date. When you go thirty or more days past the due date, you get a negative mark on your credit score. These marks usually remain on your credit report for seven years.

Keep old accounts open
Of course, the goal of most people is to pay off any debt that they have. This is a great goal, but if you do end up paying off debt that you owe and you have an account with a zero balance, you should not close the account down. Why not? Well, length of credit history is a determining factor when figuring out credit score. That means the longer you keep an account open, the higher your credit score will be. An additional benefit of keeping old accounts open and available is that if you need to use the account in the future, you don’t have to worry about having your credit report pulled again as you would if you were to open a new account.

Don’t take on new debt
One final way to help improve your credit score is by not taking on new debt. That is, debt that you would have to use credit to pay for. It is okay to take on new debt if you have the money to pay for it up front. You wouldn’t, however, want to take on any new debt that you would have to finance.

These three suggestions for improving credit will help you along on your road to improving your credit score and you can implement them immediately. Check back next week for more help with improving that all important credit score.