Credit, Credit Scores, Credit Reports
Borrowing money is very tough in this economic environment but it’s not impossible. If you have good credit scores, you will still get a good rate and be able to buy a house or your dream car. Here are several ways which you can accomplish this.
Those paid monitoring programs are actually very good at helping you maintain a good credit score. What happens is that they keep a tab on your credit report for you and if there are any changes, they will send you an email so you can either “ignore it” if it was a legitimate change or dispute it right away.
Of course, there’s always the free credit report that you can get from each of the three credit report agencies per year. To maximize the benefit, separate the time that you get the reports. For example, get one in January, then another one in May and another one in September so you are on top of your credit.
You need to make sure you don’t use up all your credit all the time. This is because part of your credit score is dependent on your utilization rate, a measure of how much credit you have available versus how much you use.
Every time you apply for credit, they will ding your credit report. If there are too many within a short period of time, the score will be affected because no one with a good financial picture will keep apply for credit. If it’s not absolutely necessary, space out your applications so it doesn’t look suspicious!
Use all your credit cards because having cards canceled on you is not a good sign that you are a good borrower. This will in turn lower your score.
Remember to apply for a few credit cards and have some lines of credit available even if you don’t need it. I used to only have one card and one day I was denied for my business credit card because they told me I only have 1 credit card and haven’t shown that I can pay off debt, even though I have tons of cash in my bank account.
Different types of borrowing will help your credit scores because it shows that you have debt and are proven to be able to manage it. Without it, lenders really won’t know how you will react when the big bills come due every month.
