Man, whoever is giving you such advice (open new credit cards before re-finance).
> My thought was that by getting c.c. then
> running up charges and paying on time
> was the way to get your score up.
Your thought was exactly wrong, esp. with run up charge and pay up on time. Only charge you need to run up is a $1.07 pack of gum, let it post and pay.
I am a little suspicious of the sequence of events and the score effect you are describing. 40 pt increase in score? Do you have other highly utilized credit cards? If so, what was your utilization percentage before? And what is it now?
You need to pull your full power report (not just the score update), and see the top-listed negative factors.
You will probably see this:
- you have recently been looking for credit,
- you have opened credit in the last year (or recently),
- your balances are large or something like.
At any rate, instead of speculating or letting me do the same, you should get your full score power report, see what the bads are and fix them.
I suspect that the only thing you can do now is pay down as much balance as possible.