Last Updated on Apr 7, 2020 by James W
One of the best long-term money-saving tactics isn’t about saving money at all. In fact, boosting your credit score is actually one of the best ways that you can save money over the long term. How so? For starters, the better the credit score you have, the less credit risk you are to potential lenders. So, they are going to give you more credit at lower interest rates.
If you plan to make large purchases in the near future – i.e. buy a house or rental properties – then it’s incredibly important to raise your credit score because lower mortgage interest rates means saving thousands upon thousands of dollars over the life of your loan. And the same holds true for vehicle loans, business loans, home equity loans, and other larger credit-based purchases. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the quickest things you can do to add 100 points to your credit score in very little time at all.
Eliminate All Errors from Your Credit Reports
Minor errors might not seem like a big deal on the surface, but they are actually detrimental to your highest potential credit score.
Do you know if you have errors on your credit reports? If not, then you should contact the three credit bureaus to get copies your free credit reports immediately.
After you’ve gotten these reports, look over them closely under a microscope – figuratively speaking – and see if you can discover any mistakes that don’t belong on your report. As an example, let’s say a collection account recently showed up on your credit report and it certainly doesn’t belong there. This will have a serious negative affect on your overall credit score.
On the opposite side of the coin, once you take the necessary steps to have this incorrect collections account removed from your credit reports, you will see a huge jump in your scores on all three credit bureaus, as long as you have it removed from every report.
According to CreditRepairServices.co, a website sharing information stating that even top rated credit repair services aren’t guaranteed, “If your credit report includes information that you believe to be false or incomplete, you should request an investigation.???
Always Pay Your Bills on Time, Every Time
Roughly 5% of the US population has grievous errors on their credit report, and if they want to boost up their credit score, they need to correct those errors because it should make a major difference. On the other hand, if you aren’t one of the 5%, you need to pay close attention to whether or not you have a lot of past due accounts that need to be taken care of.
Whether you realize it or not, the payment history on your accounts basically makes up roughly 1/3 of your overall credit score. So it’s vital to keep your accounts up to date in an effort to have a healthy credit rating. It’s not possible to reverse a missed or late payment, but you definitely have to pay your bills on time going into the future so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on your credit score from now on. By missing payments, they will stay on your credit report for seven years. And the more recent late or missed payments, the greater the impact it’s going to have on your overall score.
As an example, if you miss a payment one time, it could actually knock down your credit score by as much as 100 points. And the unfortunate thing about the credit score formula is that it has no way to actually distinguish between a minor infraction by forgetting to pay a bill on time and an actual difficult financial situation where you couldn’t afford to pay a bill.
Conclusion
If you follow these guidelines, and also never use more than 30% of your total credit limit, you’ll be able to add 100 points to your credit score relatively quickly.
