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There are lots of ways to improve your credit score. Before you develop a specific strategy you must first determine why your score is not where you want it to be.
There are many factors that affect your credit score. You should first determine if your credit score is low because you do not have any credit history, or you have very little credit history. It could also be low due to previous accounts that are reporting a negative history on you.
If you do not have any credit, or you have very little credit your scores are unlikely to be high until you develop a longer-term history over more accounts. If this situation applies to you there may be some things that you could do to help.
If you have a friend or family member with established credit then maybe they could help you. If they add you as an authorized user to a credit card that they have had for a while you will then receive the credit benefits of that card.
Once that card starts to report against your credit as well your score will immediately reflect the history from this account. The benefit is that you are not responsible for this account and you can have it removed from your credit report at anytime by notifying the credit bureaus that you are only an authorized user and not an obligated borrower.
You should be careful using this technique in certain situations. If the credit card that you are added to as an authorized user is close to being maxed out it could hurt your score. Also, the minimum payment on that account will be counted in your debt ratio. It is best if they add you to card with a low balance versus limit, and a low monthly payment.
If your credit score is very close to where you need to be and you only need a few points this tip may help get you over the top.
If you are like most people, you receive lots of junk mail. Most of these are preapproved credit offers for mortgages and credit cards and auto loans etc.
Most people unaware, but you have the choice to opt out of receiving these offers. This means that the credit bureaus will not provide any data on you to third-party marketing companies.
When you choose to opt out of receiving these offers it is believed that the credit scoring algorithm gives you a slight bump for being a responsible credit user. We have seen increases as much as 7 to 10 points and 10 days.
If you would like to opt out visit Opt-Out.
Wait two weeks and have your loan officer reported a credit to check for improvement.
This by no means works in all situations, but we have seen it work a high enough percentage of the time to warrant sharing it with you.
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