Credit Score Scale

There are two main parts to credit improvement if you want to have a better credit score: repair and rebuild. The second part of this often gets overlooked. First you have to try and fix your damage, but that’s simply not enough-you also need to have built up some positive payment history, among other factors, so that there are things on your report to calculate a good score with.

First things, first. Your rating is decided based on the information in your credit report. That report is the key to understanding everything there is to know about your finances and how to fix your rating. It has absolutely everything you need to know.

When you go to look at how to repair your credit, you’re going to focus on the payment history section. This is going to be a lot of paying down your debts, and seeing if you can get old late payments taken off your history. If you still have an account with the company that you paid late once a while back, you can write to that company and ask for a good faith adjustment, since you’re a loyal customer. This can’t hurt and doesn’t cost you anything, so you might as well try.

But if you want to move up to a high credit score range then doing all of this repair is simply not enough. To raise your rating, you’re also going to need to focus on rebuilding, and to this end, again we turn to your credit report. Do you have some positive payment history, with both cards and loans? You’ll want that on there to have a good score. How old is your credit? Age is a small factor, but definitely big enough to be worth considering. If you have an old card or something that isn’t on your report, consider using it lightly for a while to see if you can make it show up and age your history. The amount of credit available to you against the amount you are actually using is another consideration. The more available, and the less you use, the better. To this end, see if you can get your card company to raise your limit and raise it on your report. Also, always use under thirty percent of that limit, and pay it off in full each month. This is also good for building up payment history.

None of these things are particularly difficult, or rocket science exactly, but it needs to be thought about so that you can build up a plan and get yourself a good credit rating. The more you can do to move up the scale, the better off you’ll be.