5 Tips to Improve Your Credit Score!
Improving your credit score is probably something that everyone starts thinking about between the ages of 18-25. Since I got married at a young age, I needed to start working on my credit score as soon as I learned what it was in the first place.
Your credit score basically shows whether you make your payments on time, how many loans you have, how much you’re utilizing your credit cards, etc. If your credit score is not high enough, you will NOT be able to get a house or a car with just your name, unless you have a good amount of Down Payment, then you can. It normally is a struggle for people that are just starting off. No Credit is better than Bad Credit! But even with “No Credit” you still have to put a significant amount for a down payment unless you get someone that has good credit to co-sign with you.
I had no credit and my husband had bad credit because of some hospital bills that were never paid off.
Here are tips that helped me with “No Credit” improve my credit score and helped my husband with “Bad Credit” improve his!
- Since I had no credit, I started off by putting anything I could under my name. When we got our house we had no furniture at all! So we went to Ivan Smith Furniture and decided to get our living room furniture in payments and put it under my name. This is something that we had to get regardless. We had about half of the living room furniture money already saved up so that counted as a down payment and from there we made our monthly payments and gave extra every month. It helps to pay off your debts quicker and you’re not paying as much interest if you pay off your furniture sooner. This helped improve my credit score by showing that I made my monthly payments on time.
- Something else we did was get a loan. Nothing big and crazy, just a $5,000 Loan. We wanted to fix up our house a little so we decided a loan would be our best option. The bank approved! Once again, we made our monthly payments and gave extra money every month so we can finish paying it off quicker. That also improved my credit score.
- Once I got those 2 loans on my credit report, I applied for a credit card. The first credit card I applied for was for Kay’s Jewelry, which is where we got our wedding bands. I was so surprised when I found out I was approved. Once again, we made our payments and left the credit card alone. We have not used it since then but it still shows as an active account on my credit report which is really good!
- After I got approved for that Credit Card, I applied for 2 other ones. & got approved as well. The goal is to have accounts on your credit report opened. The more accounts, they see the better. As long as you make your payments on time & only use 20% or less of your credit card limit your credit score should keep improving little by little.
- This improved my credit score tremendously. So I added my husband as an authorized user on my credit cards. He did not have to get approved for anything; they just sent him a credit card in the mail that had the exact same card number but with his name on it instead. I did not know at first that this was going to affect his credit score, but I was so glad it did! His credit score improved so much as well after adding him as an authorized user on my credit cards.
***One of the first credit cards I applied for was Chase Freedom Unlimited. I really like this one because you get 1.5% cash back on every purchase! You can then use that money to pay off your credit card or request it to be added to your bank account for personal use! I have had this credit card now for over a year and have not had any issues with it. If you are looking into applying for a credit card, I highly recommend this one. Plus, you can get $150 bonus if you spend $500 on purchases within the first 3 months from account opening! Link is listed below!***
