by Lynndee Marony

Created on: May 04, 2010

Improving your credit score is something you can always do, no matter how bad your credit score is. While some factors that impact your credit score cannot be changed simply or quickly, there are a three things you can do that can make almost immediate changes to your credit score.

The fastest way to improve your credit score is by reducing your credit card balances. 30% of the credit score is determined by your credit utilization. For the greatest positive impact on your credit score, your utilization should be between 1-20%. This means if you have 3 credit cards and have a total of $3000 in credit. You should always have your total balances between $1-$600. It does not matter if you have $600 on one card and the other two credit cards are paid off or if you have the amounts spread out.

The higher your total credit utilization goes, the more it damages your credit score.  The good news about this is as soon as you make a payment and the creditor reports the new balance, your score will immediately go up. It is not uncommon to see someone lower their credit utilization from 90% to 10% and see their score go up more than 100 points. This is an amazing and easy improvement to your credit score.

The second best way to quickly improve your credit score is to add positive credit if you do not have any active accounts on your credit history. If you have a bad credit score or no credit, you can open a secured credit card. A secured credit card is one that you put a deposit down as collateral and they credit issuer will issue you a visa or mastercard equal to the amount you have deposited in their interest bearing account. If you want a $500 limit, you will need to deposit $500. Look for a card issuer that offers low interest, no fees, reports to all three credit bureaus and offers 100% acceptance. Within 6 months of using your card and making timely payments, you will see a nice increase in your score. Usually after 12 months, the car issuer will review your account and if it has been maintained in good status, they will convert the card to unsecured and send your deposit back to you.  If you get two secured cards, make all payments on time, keep all balances between 1-20%, within 12 months, you should be in the position to apply for unsecured credit cards.  Your score should be up at least 100 points within a years time frame of opening the new accounts. You can read this article for more information on secured credit cards and other ways of establishing new credit with no credit or bad credit.

The third way is to pull your credit report and dispute any inaccurate items on your credit report. Federal law gives you the right to dispute anything on your credit report. If the creditor fails to verify the debt within 30 days, the debt must be removed from your credit file. Getting any negative item removed, will raise your score immediately. The older an item is or if is it paid off, charged off or wrote off, the easier it is to get a deletion.

There are many more ways to improve your credit score but the two above are the two ways that offer you the ability to make relatively quick improvements to your score. You can read many more suggestions here. With a small amount of work, you can see your credit score start to improve within 30 days.

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