You have to work very hard to build your credit and stay on top of it because it’s very important for your future as an investor and the expansion of your real estate portfolio. There are some tips that you can implement in order to increase your credit score almost instantly. If you want to find out how to get there, that’s exactly what we’re going to cover today.
Most people are looking to make a quick improvement in order to hopefully qualify for a much better rate when it comes to buying a house or maybe just qualifying for buying a house.
We’re going to go over five important tips that you can do and follow in order to help you improve your credit, almost like this instantly.
Understanding the FICO score to increase your credit
This is in essence what makes up the FICO score:
- 30% it’s the debt that you have.
- 35% for the timely payments.
- 10% refers to credit mix.
- 15% meaning the length of your credit.
- 10% it’s in reference to new credit. Every time you apply for a new credit card.
Now that we know this, we’re going to move on to tip number one:
1. Request a credit line increase.
The very first tip that you can implement to make your credit score jump right away, is by just simply calling the bank and requesting a line increase.
How is that possible? How does that help me? It’s very helpful to understand why. Let’s assume you have a total credit line of $1,000 and out of that $1,000, you wind up using $500. $500 out of $1,000, that means you owe 50% in depth. That’s how the creditors are looking at it.
If you request a line increase, you can do it by calling the 1-800 number in the back of this card and you request a line increase. If you get approved, you can get approved for $5,000, for example. But your debt, it’s the same, it’s $500. When you’re taking $500 in comparison to $5,000, that means your debt ratio dropped 10%. We went from 50% to 10%, almost instantly.
Every time you request a credit line increase, they have to do a pull. A pull will only cost you about two points of your overall credit score but if you do get approved to $5,000 and you manage to drop your debt ratio from 50% to 10%, that means your score is going to increase by 30%. We’re talking about double digits numbers and what is only two points. It’s like a transactional thing.
2. Request a new Credit Card.
Another tip that you can implement that’s going to help you tremendously is just simply requesting a new credit card.
Apply for new credit cards. Why is that? It’s the simple same analogy. Let’s say, for example, you have two cards, $500 each, add up to a thousand, you owe $500. That means 50%. That’s your debt.
If you have one card that you have $500, but then you apply for a new card where they approve $4,000 and then your total credit line is $5,000.
Then you managed to drop your debt from 50% to 10%. This is only a different step that you’re taking. It gives you the flexibility to apply for more on the same day without it showing in your credit score.
3. Use of a personal loan.
You can apply for a personal loan and use that money to pay your credit card.
Yes, you are taking debt from one place to get rid of debt in another place, but with a personal loan, you’re basically tackling this. Having a personal loan is a type of credit, having a credit card is a type of credit, having a car loan is a type of credit, having a mortgage is also a type of credit.
When you have multiple types of credit and you’re managing them in a very efficient way, meaning doing your payments on time, you’re showing the creditors that you’re actually a very responsible person and that you can juggle around.
You can actually multitask from one type of credit to another and that only shows that you are versatile and smart and very diligent with that.
Credit cards tend to be viewed as bad debt and a personal loan tends to be viewed as not so much of a bad debt. We’re talking about degrees of how bad each one is. Credit cards are definitely bad in the eyes of a creditor.
If you manage to eliminate your credit card debt with a personal loan, now we’re talking about a 30% increase in your debt because now you’re eliminating all that credit card debt, and you’re only having one loan to worry about and pay. In addition to that, you’re addressing the credit mix component of your FICO score.
4. Authorized user.
For example: you have your parents or an uncle or aunt or cousin, brother, sister, partner that has an excellent credit score. at least an 800 credit score.
What you can do is just simply come up to them and say, “Hey, I will like to get your help by adding me as an authorized user to your credit profile.” What this does is that they’re going to add you to their profile and they’re going to receive a credit card.
You’re not going to get a hold of that credit card. You should tell them that, so that way they can trust you because people tend to be very careful and very protective of their credit score. They don’t want anybody messing with it because it takes just a second to destroy it, but it takes a long time to build it.
All you need is to be on their profile as an authorized user for an approximation of two months. What this does is that when you’re added to this person’s credit profile your credit is going to start mirroring that person’s credit.
If your credit score was a 600, it can help you bump your credit score, depending on your profile, because there are different factors in the FICO score, but it could go up 100 points, which will bring it from 600 to 700 points. That’s almost instant.
The good part about this is that your low credit score or your low credit profile would not be reflected in your partner’s credit score. It’s a one-way street, but it’s definitely not a two-way street.
If his credit score goes down, your credit is impacted as well. You definitely don’t want that to happen. That’s why a maximum of two months is enough because you also want to keep your credit on their strong supervision.
Your partner can be very responsible but make mistakes all the time and you definitely do not want to be on the wrong side of the equation and you do not want to pay for other people’s mistakes.
5. Using a balance transfer.
You might be thinking, “It just simply sounds like moving debt from one place to another.” Yes, you are. However, you’re actually paying a debt faster, which means you can help bring up your score a lot faster.
If you have multiple credit cards, for example, one credit card at 24.99%, and you’re owing $10,000 in that credit card, you might notice that a big chunk of that payment, if you make a $500 payment every month, a big chunk of it, at least $200 is going towards interest.
That means only $300 is going towards the paying down of that debt. That only translates to you paying off that debt in a very, very slow time.
You definitely don’t want to do that. What a lot of people do is they take advantage of 0% credit cards, the ones with zero APR. What they do is that they give you an introductory rate, it could be six months or 12 months, sometimes even 18 months, to pay off a debt that you transfer into this card.
You can call the bank and request for a balance transfer into the other bank. That way you can pay your debt without any interest.
It is definitely a slower way to increase your credit score but it’s one that it’s proven and it actually does work because now you’re paying off your debt without having to worry about any interest, it is cheaper and you also come out of that debt a lot faster, just because of the fact that you don’t have to deal with any interest.
You can easily reduce that credit card debt by sometimes even half the time, if you become very aggressive with it and not adding more debt onto that card, of course.
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