Reliable Ways to Improve your Credit, FAST!

Welcome back! This week, I’ll be talking all about how to improve your credit. If you haven’t seen our previous article or video on the minimum credit score you need to qualify for a conventional loan, feel free to click this link here to understand why you might want to improve your credit: https://www.growmortgages.com/minimum-credit-score-conventional/

First off, I want to reassure you that having poor or average credit is not the end of the world, and there’s many ways to work around it. Here at GROW Mortgages, my team and I know that sometimes unexpected things can happen, and we actually plan ahead to provide our clients multiple options to make sure they don’t end up in a tight spot even with a lower credit score.

Still, those workarounds don’t change the fact that good credit does help, so much like exercise, it doesn’t help to regularly work on improving your credit.

Now let’s get into it. Here are 3 good habits, a.k.a. 3 fundamentals, to improve your credit. They’re tried, they’re true, and they work faster than you might expect.

1. Make your payments on time. Very simple and self-explanatory, the credit companies aren’t going to trust people who don’t pay when it’s time to pay.
2. Maintain your credit card utilization under 20%. In simple terms, if you have a credit limit of $1,000, keep your balance under $200.
3. Extend your credit history. The longer you have your cards or account open, the higher your credit score will be, as it shows you’re willing to stick around for the long term.

You’ve probably heard the above fundamentals plenty of times, and they hold true. What you probably haven’t heard yet are the following tips, or “hacks” if you will, that I’m about to tell you.

Here’s where credit improvement really gets interesting, and where it can get really tricky. A lot of myths can float around on how to improve your credit, so I’ve done the legwork to make sure these hacks I’m talking about are actually effective and make a big difference.

I’ll keep it simple in this post, and I’ll give you 3 hacks you can use to really take control of your credit score.

1. Call your credit card company to increase your credit limit. Doing this will decrease your utilization, so let’s return to the $1,000 limit example I talked about earlier. If you owed $200, it would be 20% of your total limit; if your card’s total limit was $2,000 instead, it’s now only 10% of your total limit. While you still owe the same amount, you owe less of the total amount the credit card company is allowing you to have, so your credit score goes up.
2. Know the dates your creditors report to the Credit Bureaus. This will allow you to pay off your balance a few days before they submit their reports, which increases your credit score since it also lowers your utilization. For example, my Visa reports on the 15th of every month, which I can check according to apps like Credit Karma, so I tend to pay off my balance in full on the 10th of each month. In effect, you’re paying before the Credit Bureaus can determine your new credit score, so they’ll give you a new score with the empty balance in mind.
3. Piggyback off of someone else’s good credit standing. If you jump onto someone else’s credit card as a joint user, their entire credit standing will be reflected onto your entire profile, not just that one card. Now, make sure you can trust this person to have a good credit history because doing this can go both ways, so if they have bad credit standing, that will also be reflected onto your profile.

So there you have it. 3 fundamental good habits as well as 3 trustworthy hacks to push your credit score up, without any of the weird tricks that many credit apps may try to offer you. I use these tips all the time to make sure that I have a great credit score, and now you can too! Whether it’s for a small purchase or a big investment, keeping your credit score in good shape is definitely worth dedicating some time to. As mentioned before, there is a minimum credit score required for many big financial moves, such as applying for a conventional loan as a homebuyer, which you can learn more about using this link here: https://www.growmortgages.com/minimum-credit-score-conventional/

If this was helpful or if you have other questions you’d like me to answer, go ahead and let me know via a comment down below, or through contacting us here at GROW Mortgages via the phone number (562)-646-7141 or through jlopez@growre.com.