Introduction
Money is never enough. Whether or not you keep track of your finances, you can never really say that you’re satisfied with a certain amount. In fact, this is why some people borrow. You can either ask your family and friends for money or go to a financial institution which is more reliable. Even so, borrowing from a financial institution depends on your credit score.
You want to have a credit score of above 670 if you want to gain access to loans that can actually help you make a difference in your life. Maybe you want to purchase one of the Penticton homes for sale and finally put a roof over your head. That means that if you have anything below the above figure, financial institutions are less likely to give you money. Luckily, there are some things that you can do to increase your score.
How to increase your Credit Score
1. Debt Reduction
The first step towards increasing your credit score is committing yourself to settling your debts, especially your credit card purchases. As much as a credit loan can help you get around and settle certain expenses, the debt can be quite overwhelming and hard to clear if you just let it slowly accumulate.
Therefore, the earlier you start repayment, the better. The best way to do this is by seizing all credit card purchases until you clear all the outstanding debt.
2. Payment Reminders
Life can be so full of responsibilities that you forget about loan deadlines. This means that you need to make the effort to set reminders so that you don’t skip your payment deadlines. The more you ignore the deadlines, then more the debt continues to accumulate and the lower your credit score goes.
Reminders can help you stay on top of things and avoid late payment penalties.
3. Stay on your Current Debt
Once you’ve cleared some of the outstanding bills and lowered your debt to a manageable amount, make sure that you keep it that way. You may be tempted to take another loan, but what good will that do?
If your income status hasn’t changed, don’t take another loan. Otherwise, you’ll only make life harder on yourself.
4. Avoid Moving Debt Around
There are instances when the going gets tough. When that happens, you need to be smart about it. Borrowing on credit can easily blind you since this is plastic money, and you never really get to physically handle it in most cases.
Therefore, once your debts start to pile up, you might be tempted to borrow elsewhere to settle your current debt. Even though the strategy might work and you can use the other debt to settle your current loan, it might not be very effective in the long run. This is because your debt keeps moving around. As a result, you’ll always owe money to financial institutions.
5. Build a Credit History
To be honest, borrowing can lead to desperate measures especially if you have a lot of debt to settle. There are borrowers that even go to the extent of opening different credit accounts so as to borrow more.
This might sound like a smart idea, but you risk more buildup of debt by doing so. On the other hand, using one credit account allows you to build your credit history faster and increase the probability of getting a higher credit score.
6. Analyze your Credit Report
Sometimes it takes you a while to see the truth about what you’ve been doing. There are various credit rating institutions that allow you to ask for your credit report for a small fee. Most people tend to ignore these reports because they believe that they have a handle on things.
However, be smart and ask for yours. It is only after looking at your credit report that you will know where to draw the line and what expenses to avoid.
7. Keep it Open and Focus on Paying it
You might think that closing your credit card account will make the debt go away, but it won’t. The next time you try to borrow with a different bank, you will be locked out until you clear that credit card loan.
Therefore, it’s important to focus on clearing the amount due. After that, you can either decide to keep the account or close it.
Conclusion
Having a bad credit score can put you at a great disadvantage since it shows that you may not be able to pay back the money that you borrow. Therefore, it’s important to keep track of your current debts and clear them so that you can increase your credit score.
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