How to Improve Your Credit Score
What is a FICO/BEACON Credit Score?
Your credit score is also known as your beacon score or FICO score. It is a measure of your credit worthiness and is increasingly important in your quest for getting new credit. Think of your score like your report card. Credit bureaus invented credit scores to automate lending. This allows banks to eliminate human labor costs, streamline the approval process, and increase profits for the banks.
What is a Good Credit Score?
Although the three major credit bureaus use varying credit scoring models, lenders generally recognize a credit score over 700 as within the top 1 or 2 credit tiers. In other words, if you goal is to improve your credit score, you should try to reach a score of at least 700.
What Can I Do to Quickly Improve my Credit Score?
Nothing helps raise a bad credit score more quickly than deleting negative information from your credit reports.
Example #1
Dave C. of Tampa, Florida found himself with a poor credit score after living on credit cards during college. His credit score plunged to the 500 - range after the accounts were charged off and sold to collection agencies. Although he paid his car payment and Capital One Credit Card religiously each month, credit bureaus nonetheless punished him with a low score because of the derogatory payment history.
Dave enrolled in the services of a credit correction law firm who deleted the negative items. Within approximately four months his credit score topped the *magical* 700 range.
As you can see, you will see the most drastic credit score increase if you can remove bad credit entirely from your report. For more information on how to effectively delete derogatory credit information, you can dial 1-888-585-3855.
(information deleted includes charge offs, judgments, collection agencies, repossession, foreclosure, bankruptcy, garnishment, settled accounts, late payments, inquiries, and more).
Example #2
Amanda B. and Daniel met while in enrolled in culinary school and quickly fell in love. Soon after they were engaged and making plans for the future. They wanted to purchase a new home, but had very little experience with credit. Other than a few student loans, neither had taken out a credit card.
Sadly, this young couple’s lack of credit hurt them. Their credit scores were in the “poor category” even though they both paid their normal bills (such as electric, cell phone) on time each month.
Amanda and Daniel quickly learned that they must establish new revolving credit in order to help increase their credit scores. By getting an unsecured credit card with a large credit line, they were able to improve their FICO scores to 712 and 727 respectively and get approved for a new home.
As a footnote,
Most lenders use an electronic scoring method so often your credit score is the only factor in whether you get approved. This is true even when you purchase a new home. Even though mortgage lenders review each item on your credit report, your beacon credit score ultimately determines
Three Critical Methods to Increase Your Credit Score
Method 1 - Delete negative listings. Sadly, even *one* negative item can crush an otherwise good credit history.
You should make every effort to dispute and delete the following information: charge offs, late pays, collections, garnishment, judgment, bankruptcy, included in bankruptcy, settled for less, public record, repossession, foreclosure.
Method 2 - Open an unsecured revolving line of credit. Unsecured means the loan is not *secured* by collateral such as a car, house, etc. Revolving means you can choose to carry a balance from month to month.
Credit bureaus favor those people with an established history of good payments to an unsecured revolving line of credit.
For a guaranteed unsecured line of credit, we recommend the Ox Publishing Line of Credit. It comes with a guaranteed $5,000 or $10,000 credit line and reports to all three bureaus.
Click Here for more information about the Ox Card.
Method 3 - Remove inquiries or limit number of inquiries. This is a little known secret to increasing your credit score.
1 Comment Add your own
1. connie talsky | September 15th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Where can one use the Ox credit Card? Is it used in the same way a visa, master card or discover card? Where is the credit card accepted? For example is it accepted by all merchants or is it limited to one store? I am not clear on how it works.
Are balances to be paid in full every month as the american express credit card?
Hope to hear from you soon.
Thank- you.
Connie Talsky
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