What are the fast and effective ways to improve credit?

[Creightonite]

Considering all the options right now. Right now the only thing I thought of it to do the balance transfers from account to account which would make banks think as if I am paying their accounts in full and using the empty credit I have at the same time. That costs money but at the end you end up not actually spending that much money money and falling in debt. I can live with 3% balance transfer fee if my credit improves.

Of course I am doing all of these things:

1) keeping my balances less than 50% of the credit limit
2) trying to pay all my bills in full

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[natsipoo]

Moving balances around isn't going to change your balance/available credit ratio so that's actually a waste of BT fees which would be better served as payment towards your balance.

If you don't have a lot of recent inquiries or a large number of open accounts on your CR you might try opening up another account, WITHOUT increasing the amount owed of course to lower your utilisation ratio.

 

[mshheaddoc]

I agree. You need to increase the amount of "available" credit as well as establish tradelines. I would suggest maybe using a credit card and paying off MONTHLY. Just having the available credit is helpful but if you actually use it then it looks better.

 

[oneaat]

call your cc company to increase your credit limit. my old max was 1300, so the highest balance i ever had was 1200. which is not a lot, but is a huge percentage. i increased my limit to 5000 and that 90+% is down to about 25%. this only works if you are financially responsible/solvent enough to not increase you cc spending to new levels.

 

[blaze1306]

How do you go from bad to good credit? Any good websites, do I start off with secured credit cards, then what?

 

[patmcd]

If you already have bad credit then a secured card is a good place to start. You could also consider getting someone to let you cosign on their credit card. But if you are going to try that option, make sure you sign on with somone that has good credit. Cosigning onto a card thats issued to a person with moderate to bad credit isnt going to help you. Rebuilding your credit takes a long time. There aren't really and fast ways to improve your credit score.

 

[LADoc00]

If you already have bad credit then a secured card is a good place to start. You could also consider getting someone to let you cosign on their credit card. But if you are going to try that option, make sure you sign on with somone that has good credit. Cosigning onto a card thats issued to a person with moderate to bad credit isnt going to help you. Rebuilding your credit takes a long time. There aren't really and fast ways to improve your credit score.

7 years to be exact.

 

[mshheaddoc]

rebuilding doesn't always take 7 years though (but sometimes even longer). You can see results in a year or teo with steady increases.

 

[blaze1306]

My wife and I discussed it and after paying off some old debts we did'nt even realize were on our credit report (about 3000 worth) We are going to open a secured loan at a local credit union for $1000, and get a secured credit card to begin rebuilding our credit. Any other suggestions?

According to the loan rep its a very quick way to show good accounts on your credit report.

 

[kate_g]

1) keeping my balances less than 50% of the credit limit
2) trying to pay all my bills in full

One other thing you can do, if you're disciplined, is pay twice a month. The date that your account info is reported to the credit bureau is not synced to your bill payment. So if they happen to send the data just before you were about to pay, you'll look like you have a large balance even if you were planning on paying it all in full. Log in to your account website every two weeks (or as often as you can stand) and send in a payment for whatever the current balance is. Same effect on your wallet, but you'll always look like you have a lower used balance/available credit ratio. It's not going to shoot you from bad credit to good credit any faster, but if you charge a lot of daily purchases for convenience (or airline miles) keeping that ratio low will boost your score a little bit right away.

(Of course this takes more work than opening a new account or asking for credit limit increases on your current accounts, all of which have the effect of lowering that ratio. The above strategy is useful if you want to have a minimal number of accounts or don't trust yourself with a higher credit limit.)