Fico Scores And Improving Them How?
If a person has a fico score of 516 and was behind on credit cards, etc. then started paying on time again. Would they have to be paid off before the score would go up some. Or just paid on time for a few months.
dottie, i'm no credit expert, but i've been dealing with mine for quite some years and i was told that paying the bills ontime helps your score more immediately, b/c every payment affects it for the better or worse. i'm not sure of the logic, but i hear if you pay them off totally, your score actually goes down for a couple months before it comes back up. if you want to get to, say, 540 (a first cut-off point for some lenders) just start paying on time on a few accounts. if you have more time to fix it, then pay it off and within 2-3 months, it will come back up and go up a bit more (assuming you don't make anything else late).
just paying on them every month helps but if you have multiple cards with balances your score drops simply cause you have too many accounts with balances especialy if there close to the limit.
let's look at some of the ways to improve credit ratings
1. Use the old 3 banks trick to get better scores. Its kind of long so if you want to know about it send me an email and I'll gladly send it to you.
2. If you have inqiries they bring down your score. If that is one of your problems you can enroll in the ****Must Reach Senior Investor status before posting URL's*** program for a buck and after 3 months its about 60 a year for unlimited pulls. Pull your credit reports every day and also go join ****Must Reach Senior Investor status before posting URL's*** and get daily reports for free. Each time you view your report through worthknowing you need to delete your account and sign up for a new one the next day.
Pulling your reports will start to knock out old inquiries after a month or so and you will soon end up with no inquiries at all.
3. Pay those credit cards and other loans down so you have as high an overall credit limit as possible with the lowest usage rate possible as well. Try to keep your usage down to about 20% or so of your total availale credit
4. Pay cash for most things but use your credit cards a little bit each month, bringing the totals back down to your preset goal of about 20 to 25 percent usage levels.
That should all help improve your scores by a big bunch.
[addsig]
One more idea. Paying off creditcards on time is good. If you have multiple cards and one is paid off, charge something small (a tank of gas) and pay it in full each month. That should help.
First dont forget to call each credit acount and ask to have the credit increased it will lower your debt to credit ratio ,it will give your score a boost. you can do this every 6 months
Second try this: take $ 500.00 put it in a cd or a savings acount, use it for security to loan the same amount. Take the loan money to another bank and due it again. Three places should due the trick. as a previous post mentioned make sure the loan is for at least 6 months in length or it will not be reported to the credit burrows. each for positive points
this will cost you a little to get the loans, and a little in interrest because the amount is not that high.
MAKE SURE YOU MAKE THE PAYMENTS ON TIME