Quickest Ways to Improve a Credit Score

When your credit goes bad the first thing you want to do is try to repair it so that you can finance the purchases you need to make such as a home or a car. Repairing your credit can take a long time, but while you are in the process of repairing your credit there are several things you can do to improve your credit score.

Pay Your Credit Cards Down

When it comes to your credit cards, you only want to use a maximum of 30 percent of the available credit to help maintain the maximum credit score possible. One of the quickest ways to raise your credit score is to stop using your credit cards, and then start paying them down on a rotating basis. Start with the card that has the most balance used on it, and pay it down to a level of 30 percent usage. Once you have it paid down that far, move on to the next card. As you pay cards down and stop using them, your credit score will quickly rise.

Keep Cards You have Paid Off

As you pay cards down you may find that you are able to pay some of them off. When you are recovering from bad credit and trying to bump your credit score up as quickly as possible, you need as much old credit history as possible to help raise your score. As you pay cards off do not have the accounts closed. Leaving credit accounts open that are paid off means that you have credit accounts that were in good standing still on your credit report. The zero balance on these accounts will help raise your credit score quickly.

Pay Off All One-Time Bills

We all forget to pay a bill once in a while. You get a co-pay bill from the doctor's office for $20 that you forget to pay and it eventually winds up in collections. When you are trying to raise your credit score quickly, these little one-time bills can be credit score killers. Gather all of your bills together and pay off the ones that have been sitting in your bill basket for a long time. As long as you pay them prior to going to collections then there should be no negative effect. Doctor's offices, hospitals, book clubs, and other one-time bill generators do not report regularly to credit agencies. They only show up on your credit report when they go to collections. Avoid having that mark on your credit report and pay those one-time bills.