3 Ways to Boost Your Credit Score

That three-digit credit score you have is among the most important numbers in your finances. This is because this determines if you can borrow at all, and how much this borrowing is going to cost you. With different factors affecting your credit score, such as your credit’s age and your on-time payments history, raising it usually takes a while. However, if you like to give it a quick credit score boost, there are three ways you can try:

Request for Courtesy Adjustment

Just one late payment on your credit card can lead to a drop of as much as 110 points on your credit score if you used to have good credit. If you are not habitually late, your lender might be willing to eliminate this black mark from your report if you request for it.

To convince your creditor to get rid of your late payment record, you can write a letter which will politely say that you will take responsibility for your late payment and request for a courtesy adjustment. If you always made your payments on-time and you are a good customer in general, there’s a high chance your creditor will agree.

Ask for Credit Limit Increase

Among the main factors which determine your credit score is the amount of available credit you are using, or your utilization rate. This utilization rate makes up for about 30% of your credit score. It is preferable to have a lower utilization rate since lenders often get anxious the moment you begin maxing out your cards.

It is ideal that you don’t use over 30% of your available credit. If your card has a limit of $10,000, try to keep the balance at $3,000 or lower. If you go beyond this threshold with high utilization rate, reducing this ratio is among the best means of improving your credit score.

The steady and slow way to achieve this boost in credit score is through paying down your debt that also happens to be great for your financial health as a whole. However, if you like to gain points on credit score fast with no need to wait for months or even years before you pay off your debt, you can also request your credit for a credit limit increase.

If you raise your $10,000 limit to $20,000, with a balance of $5,000, you will have a healthier utilization rate of 25% compared to 50% utilization rate which sent up some red flags in the past. Although this change does give a big boost to your score, the last thing you want is maxing out the new higher limit of your card. Thus, avoid this approach if you are not confident with your spending.

Be an Authorized User

If a member of your family or friend has good credit, you can ask them if they will be willing to add you as authorized user on their card that had been open for some time and had a positive payment history. Once you become an authorized signer, you will not be responsible to pay back the card’s charges. However, the history of the card’s on-time payments will be added to your credit report. It means you will be having a long payment record as promised. This payment history makes up 35% of the credit score and this alone gives it a big boost.