Happy Home Insider
Do you have a ton of outstanding debt? Has paying multiple creditors each month made your financial life quite chaotic? Then one of the best ways to reduce that debt and your stress levels is to consolidate it and get a personal loan.
With a personal loan, you can consolidate your debt, pay it off, then simplify your payments. What’s the problem with this consolidation strategy? If your credit score is low, you may have issues getting a personal loan. And if you can get a personal loan with bad credit, chances are it will carry a high interest rate.
STOP!
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What’s the moral of the story? Whether you have a lot of debt or not, having a higher credit score is beneficial and can make life much easier. With a solid credit score, you can get personal loans, a mortgage, credit cards, or even get approved for an apartment or hired as an employee. Here are ways to improve your credit score so you can achieve all those goals.
1. Check your free credit report.
You’ll have a tough time boosting your credit if you don’t know your score. And if you’re like many, your credit history could have errors that are lowering your score.
You’re entitled to one free credit report per year. Get yours and look it over. Spot any errors of accounts that may not be yours or ones that have already been paid off. Report those errors to get them removed and boost your score.
2. Monitor your credit.
Checking your free credit report once a year is a start to boosting your score. You can’t stop there, though, as errors can appear when you least expect them while other issues arise. To prevent these problems and keep your credit score where it should be, try a credit monitoring service. Chase Credit Journey is one example of such a service that will give you weekly score updates, tips on how to boost your credit, plus identity protection against thieves.
3. Increase your credit limit.
Do you have credit cards? If you’ve been making on-time payments, you may want to ask for a credit limit increase. This will increase how much open credit you have while decreasing your credit utilization ratio, which can boost your score. Besides your payment history, your credit utilization ratio is the second most important factor in determining your score. How important is credit utilization? So much that it makes up 30 percent of your FICO score.
Another reason to ask for a credit limit increase is that it’s usually fuss-free. No fee is involved, and you don’t have to complete an application or go through a credit check.
4. Get your rent payments reported.
Rent reporting involves having your on-time rental payments factored into your credit score. Many people with low credit scores are renters who can use this to their advantage.
If your landlord does not report your rental payments to the three credit reporting bureaus, try a service like RentReporters. It can help get those rental payments reported, along with on-time utility payments. In doing so, you could get a 40-point score boost in as little as 10 days.
