Okay, friends. No excuses on having a poor, or even less than desirable, credit score any longer. I just read an article stating that the average credit scores for consumers looking to purchase new and used vehicles have dipped to levels that we saw before the recession. Not good, friends! You need that score for a lot more than just buying a car. Home loans, apartment leasing, and even certain employers if you are job searching require a good credit score to get you in the door. I found this article by Stacy Johnson at MSN Money which offers not one, not two, not three, but 18 tips on how to improve your credit score. Read on for her expert advice:
“Much the way your final grade summarized your command of a course in school, your credit scores are the distillation of everything in your credit history. And those three-digit numbers can affect you in many ways, including interest rates you’ll pay and the size of your insurance premiums.
Fortunately, credit scores aren’t set in stone. In the video below, Stacy Johnson shares his best tips for raising your credit scores. Check it out, then read on for more ways to give your scores a boost.
Now let’s flesh out Stacy’s tips and add more:
Find and dispute mistakes on your credit reports. Order a free copy of your credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com. By law, the three major credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — have to give you one free copy a year. Then, dispute any errors. They’re not uncommon. A study by the Policy and Economic Research Council found errors in 19% of the credit reports it looked at.
You can dispute errors online through each bureau: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
