9 ways to improve your credit score

If you want to learn how to improve your credit score, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve got nine great tips that can help you boost your standing in the eyes of banks and other credit providers.

Some of these tips will be quick wins; others will take longer to implement. What they have in common is that they’ll turn you into a more credit-worthy consumer.

Close extra credit cards

Unless you have a very good reason for needing multiple credit cards, it’s often a good idea to have just one – or even none if you can get by on cash and debit card alone.

Closing those extra card card accounts will reduce the amount of money you can borrow, which in turn will have two benefits.

First, it will reduce your temptation to accumulate more debt. Second, it will improve your credit profile, because when banks assess a loan application, they often work on the assumption that the borrower’s credit cards are permanently maxed out.

Reduce your credit card limit

Assuming you have just one credit card, the next step is to assess the credit limit on that card.

What’s the maximum amount of money you to need to have on call? If you think you can get by with less, you might want to ask your credit card provider to reduce your limit.

Now, when you apply for a loan and a lender assumes your credit card is permanently maxed out, less debt will be tied to your name.

Pay off your entire credit card debt each month

It might be tempting to make just the minimum monthly repayment, which is often between 2 and 3 per cent of your credit card debt.

However, if you pay 100 per cent of the debt each month, you’ll not only reduce the amount of interest you have to pay, you’ll also boost your credit score.

That’s because banks and other credit providers look positively on Australians who eliminate debt at the first available opportunity.

Make loan repayments on time

Whatever your debt – home loan, car loan, personal loan, credit card – it’s important you stick to the repayment schedule.

Making each and every repayment on time is good for your credit score, because it sends a message to lenders that you’re a responsible borrower. Falling behind on your repayments, though, sends the opposite message.

Pay off loans

At the risk of stating the obvious, lenders like it when people repay loans! So if you want to boost your credit score, make sure you repay any loan you take out. Defaulting on loans, by contrast, will damage your credit score.

Consolidate multiple debts

Another way to improve your credit score is to convert multiple debts with higher interest rates into one debt with a lower interest rate.

For example, imagine you had these three debts:

• Credit card #1 – $6,000 debt at 17.99 per cent interest
• Credit card #2 – $4,000 debt at 19.99 per cent interest
• Personal loan – $8,000 debt at 12.50 per cent interest

In that case, you’d be able to improve your financial position by doing the following:

• Taking out a new personal loan, for $18,000, at 12.50 per cent interest
• Using the new personal loan to pay off your old personal loan and your two credit cards

There are three reasons why lenders and other credit providers would regard this as an improvement:

1. You would have one loan to manage, instead of three
2. Your overall interest bill would be lower
3. You would have a repayment plan to follow (personal loans come with repayment plans – credit cards don’t)

Set up direct debits to pay bills on time

It’s good for your credit score when you pay your rent, phone bill, internet bill, water bill, electricity bill and other bills on time – and bad when you don’t.

Direct debits can make the process easier. By setting up an automated payment system, you no longer have to remember to pay bills, and no longer have to find the time.

A word of warning: make sure there’s always enough money in your account to cover the direct debits, because a missed payment will damage your credit score.

Fix errors on your credit file

Sometimes, a person’s credit score might be lower than it should be because their credit file contains false entries or important omissions.

For example, a simple typo could misrepresent how much debt you’re carrying, if a lender says you took out a personal loan for $27,000 instead of $2,700.

Alternatively, the lender’s computer system might play up and forget to record that you’ve been making the repayments on your personal loan.

It’s also possible that your credit file might contain a loan you never even took out – because it was actually taken out by someone with an identical name and mistakenly attributed to you.

Before you can fix errors, you first need to find out if any exist. To do that, you’ll need to contact one of Australia’s credit reporting bodies – Equifax, Experian and Illion – and request a credit report. You’re entitled to one free credit report per year.

If you spot any mistakes, you should contact the credit provider and/or the credit reporting body and ask to have them removed. If that doesn’t work, you should contact the relevant ombudsman.

One final point: only mistakes can be removed. Credit providers and credit reporting bodies won’t remove accurate information from your credit file.

Minimise credit applications

As a general rule, your credit score benefits when you’re seen to be a responsible user of loans and credit cards – and suffers when you’re not.

With that in mind, it’s good for your credit score when you make a limited number of credit applications – but bad when you make a lot.

Why? The reason is that someone who makes a limited number of applications is generally regarded as more responsible than someone who makes a lot.

The moral to the story is to be very selective in your credit applications. Here are three tips you might want to consider:

1. Don’t apply for credit cards or loans unless you definitely need them
2. Don’t apply for any credit product without first asking the provider to estimate your chance of approval – because if your odds are remote, it might be better not to apply at all
3. Don’t rush the process by applying for, say, three credit cards or three personal loans at once – make just the one application, even if it forces you to wait longer

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