Your credit score is an important financial number.
Lenders use your credit score to evaluate your creditworthiness when you apply for loans, mortgages, or other forms of credit.
A higher credit score typically translates to lower interest rates, better loan terms, higher credit limits, and increased chances of approval. All of this helps you save money and gain greater financial flexibility. Plus, landlords, insurance companies, and even employers may use your credit score to assess your reliability and trustworthiness.
If you’re reading this, then I’m guessing your credit score isn’t as high as you’d like it to be. Don’t worry – I’ve got you covered. Here are 7 tips to raise your credit score...
How to raise your credit score in 30 days:
1. Set up autopay
Of the five factors that your credit score is based on, payment history has the biggest impact on your credit score.
Payment history refers to a record of your past payments on credit accounts. Basically, it lets creditors know whether you have made payments on time, missed any payments, or defaulted on any accounts.
Consistently making on-time payments can positively impact your credit score, while late payments, defaults, or collections can have a negative effect.
So always, always, always pay the minimum balance. Don't ever miss a payment or be late on a payment.
To make it easy to pay your bills on time, set up automatic payments to ensure you never miss a due date.
2. Pay off your credit card throughout the month
The second most important factor in calculating your credit score is called Credit Utilization. Of the 5 factors that determine your credit score, payment history and credit utilization together make up 65%.
So what is Credit utilization? This is the ratio of your credit card balances to your credit limits. It's a measure of how much of your available credit you're using. A good credit utilization rate never exceeds 30%, and the lower it is, the better. A high utilization suggests potential financial strain or overreliance on credit.
So, if you have a credit limit of $10,000, you should never use more than $3,000 at a time.
You don't have to wait until your bill is due to make a payment. Pay early. If you've put a big expense on your card, this helps keep your credit utilization low and improve your credit score.
If you have to put a big expense on your card, go ahead and make a payment — even a partial payment — quickly so that your credit utilization doesn't ding your credit score.
Plus, paying early ensures that you’re paying on time, which boosts your payment history score.
3. Request a higher credit limit
One way to lower your credit utilization – and thus improve your credit score – is to request a higher credit limit.
Let me explain:
Let's say you have card A, which has a limit of $6,000, and card B, which has a limit of $4,000. Your total available credit is $10,000.
You want your credit utilization to stay below 30%, which means not using more than $3,000 total. You also wouldn't want to spend more than $1,800 on card A or $1,200 on card B so that your utilization stays below 30% on each card individually.
If you increase your available credit and you don't spend more, you automatically lower your credit utilization, which will instantly improve your credit score.
Now, depending on your lender, they may do a hard pull to determine if they're going to increase your credit limit or not. You can ask them in advance if they will need to do this to help you determine if you want them to actually check. If they do a hard pull, this will usually lower your credit score by five to 10 points temporarily, but it will increase it over the long run because you have improved your credit utilization ratio.
However, this strategy does not work if your balance grows along with your credit limit. So do not do this strategy if you know, you'll be tempted to spend more money on your card.
4. Become an authorized user
If you have a friend or relative with a high credit limit and history of on-time payments, ask if they’ll add you to their account as an authorized user.
The account holder doesn’t have to let you use the card or even give you the account number for this to have a positive impact on your credit score.
5. Ask for late payment forgiveness
Like I said, 35% of your credit score depends on paying on time, and a missed payment will affect your credit score for 7 years.
So, if for some reason you slip up and miss a payment deadline, pick up the phone and call your issuer ASAP. (Definitely within 30 days, which is the deadline for most lenders.)
Have the money on hand and be ready to handle things when you ask the rep not to report you to the credit bureaus.
This is likely only to work once or twice, so set up safeguards like autopay and reminders to make sure that you don’t miss; this is a last resort, not a safety net.
6. Dispute inaccurate information on your credit report
Some mistakes are simple mistakes, like a misspelled name or address. Or sometimes it happens because an account belongs to someone else who has the same name as you, but it's not actually your account.
Other errors are costlier, such as:
- accounts that were incorrectly reported late or delinquent
- debts that were listed twice
- closed accounts that are reported as still open
- accounts with an incorrect balance or credit limit
Federal law allows you to dispute inaccurate information on your credit report, and there is no fee for filing a dispute.
You can submit your dispute to the business who provided the information to the credit reporting company, and to the credit reporting company that included that misinformation on your report.
The Federal Trade Commission's website has information about how to dispute these errors on your credit reports, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's website provides additional guidance on disputing information on credit reports.
7. Add utility and phone payments to your credit report
Typically, payments such as utility and cell phone bills won’t be reported to the credit bureaus, unless you default on them.
But Experian – one of the three major credit bureaus – offers a free online tool called Experian Boost, which is designed to help people with low credit scores or thin credit files build credit history.
What this tool does is allow you to get credit for paying your utilities and phone bill — even your Netflix subscription — on time.
One thing to keep in mind is that Experian Boost will improve your credit score generated from Experian data, but if a lender is looking at your score generated from Equifax or TransUnion data, the additional sources of payment history won’t count.
Still, it’s free and easy to set up, so why not?
Final Thoughts
If you want to improve your credit score fast, these tips will help you hugely.
If you want to learn more about how to master your money using the 3-step system thousands of women+ have used to create a better financial future, be sure to check out our free masterclass!
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