Fix My Credit | Your Credit Score: 5 Things That Make or Break It

Have you been saying, “I want to fix my credit“?  There are 5 big things that make up your credit score, and when you know how to manipulate them, you can make big improvements to your credit rating. Some have more weight than others, so you will want to focus those areas that will have the biggest effect to your score in the shortest amount of time. That way you can instantly get approved for the mortgage or auto loan that you need.

These five things, in order of importance, are:

1. Your Payment History (35% of your score)
2. The Amount of Credit You are Currently Using (30% of your score)
3. Your Credit History, or Length of Credit (15% of your score)
4. How Regularly Your Credit is Checked by Lenders (10% of your score)
5. The Different Types of Credit You Have (10% of your score)

These percentages are how these 5 factors weigh on a typical consumer. The exact percentages may slightly vary, but this is a pretty accurate generalization.

Based on this, the first thing you want to do to improve your credit score is to take some time working on your payment history. That doesn’t necessarily mean just paying your bills on time. If you made late payments in the past, there are steps you can take to have those mistakes erased from your credit report.

Another quick fix to improve your payment history is to open a secured credit line and use it to make small purchases. Even if you just charge $0.10 and pay the bill off in full each month, your credit rating will dramatically increase within 30 – 60 days.

That’s a long time, but there are other things you can do to immediately increase your score. Probably the most overlooked way boost your rating is to consider how much credit you are actually using. In other words, are you maxing out your credit cards or staying well below your available credit limit? By simply moving your available credit to outstanding debt ratio to around 25 percent, you can instantly increase your credit score. This, of course, takes using a few tricks of the trade to make it happen.

Find out exactly what I’m talking about by downloading your copy of the FICO® Formula.