by William Bond

Created on: December 25, 2008   Last Updated: November 23, 2009

Your best route to getting a better FICO credit score is to review your credit report. The credit report is the nuts and bolts to the FICO credit score. Review it completely, and make certain that all the information on the credit report is correct, because if there is an error or errors on it, it will effect your FICO credit report. You can get it by contacting your credit bureau, and our can do this online. The credit report is simply a listing of all our payments for credit purchases you made during the last two years. If you find that they show payments that have been sent late, verify that fully, this could effect your credit score.

l). The most common reason why the FICO score can be adjusted lower is for late payments on your credit cards, or other purchases made on credit. Make suren that your payments are sent at least l0 days prior to the due date, so if they get lost in the mail for a few days, you will be able to get it processed in time, and not hurt your credit score. If you are late getting the payment into the mail, consider paying the bill on line, make banks, credit unions, stores, and credit cards companies allow you to pay on line, sometimes they charge a fee, but this is better than getting a late charge, and then put on your credit report.

2). Keep your credit lines as low as possible. Your FICO credit report factors into your score the percentage of your credit line you are using. For example, let's say your credit card has a $l0,000.00 limit, try not to exceed, 20-30% of it. When you are using $9,000.00 of it, this indicates that your minimum payment is getting higher and you are using up most of your credit limit. By keeping your credit limit amounts low, it helps keeps up your credit score.

3). Never miss a payment, the will be late fees, and it will appear on your credit report. If you are missing too many payments, look for ways to cut your payments for credit purchases down to a minimum. One way you can do this is to call your credit card company, and ask them to cut the payment down, or change the due date to a different time, closer to payday, or a better time of the money to make the payment.

4). Never go over your credit limit, this will cause you get charged extra fees, and it will hurt your FICO credit score. Also cut down on the excessive credit card charges, too many credit cards, will make it difficult to keep up with all the payments. Make a list of all cards, list amount owed, finance charge per year, and date due monthly. Try to stop using the cards which charge over the l0% yearly finance charge, you will save a great deal of money in interest charges, and you will have fewer cards to deal with as well. Keep working hard to bring up the credit score-it will help you get better interest charges for future purchases, even on a home or car.

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