Fantastic credit is key to getting excellent loans. In this market where lending is tight and money isn’t freely flowing, the only way to get someone to lend you money is with excellent credit. Here are a few ways to achieve this.
Believe it or not, credit monitoring services are really a excellent way to make sure your credit stays high. There is usually a charge for it, but these companies will check your credit, and if it changes, send you an email about it so you can deal with it if it’s not an authorized use.
The government has made it law that the credit report agencies need to give you a free report every few months. This not only allows you to stay on top of everything within your credit report but also give you a chance to dispute any changes to it in a timely manner. Just make sure you request it because it won’t be automatically sent to you.
One way to keep your scores high is to keep your credit utilization rate low. What this means is that if you have a maximum credit of $10,000, don’t use it all up! Since lenders may check your credit at any time, it doesn’t matter if you pay off your balance every month because at the time that they are checking it, your balance may still seem high.
Every time you apply for credit, they will ding your credit report. If there are too many within a small period of time, the score will be affected because no one with a excellent financial picture will keep apply for credit. If it’s not absolutely necessary, space out your applications so it doesn’t look suspicious!
Don’t let any credit card be inactive because credit card companies are starting to cancel them now. If your card is canceled, the utilization rate will automatically go down because your available credit will go down. Therefore, you should use your cards every once in a while even if you don’t need it.
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.
Having multiple types of debt (car, mortgage, credit card, student loans) among others is excellent because it shows that you are able to handle bills that come due every month. It also works the same as having multiple credit cards.