No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
When you decided it was time to buckle down and improve your credit...
What two-to-three changes did you make to increase it and eventually pass 760?
( For people that had over a 50 Point increase )
@SteveCi wrote:When you decided it was time to buckle down and improve your credit...
What two-to-three changes did you make to increase it and eventually pass 760?
( For people that had over a 50 Point increase )
Haven't made 760 yet, but went from 560's up to 700 in 1 1/2 yrs.
When my baddies came off I got a HUGE jump and that made me really want to improve my credit!
I have not made 760 yet also. Last year ,specificly in Jan/Feb 2012 I was in the upper 500's. I PIF all my CC's ,and within 1-2 months got a 100+ jump,into the 600's . Did the same thing this year too. I had too much trouble keeping my balances low all of 2012,so had to PIF again at tax return$ time feb 2013. Score went up again,like last year .
However, I don't know how acurate that is ,now that I know I was using a fako scoring website. I have been using a fako site since 2002 to monitor my credit off&on,thinking they were the best. Then I read about myfico website ,on one of the other forums i frequent.
50 point changes typically come with time and lots of it. About the only way to get jumps that big quickly is through derogs coming off or utilization drops.
For me it was finding this forum.
More specifically though, I was using the few cards I had, and those had low limits, and I would pay all my bills on time.
Biggest mistake I was making was letting several cards actually report a balance. Once I was able to pay all accounts except one, and that one with a small balance my scores shot up up up....
Then once I was able to really understand the FICO scores and what improved them, then I made applications at the exact right time.
It took me about 8 months here in the forum to really understand how to get the best cards and working on high limits.
Time is your friend and knowledge is power in the credit world.
@boomhower wrote:50 point changes typically come with time and lots of it. About the only way to get jumps that big quickly is through derogs coming off or utilization drops.
+1, though depends on the file.
Thin / thinnish files can see large improvements even in as "little" as a year. My Wally TU is likely up 130ish points since I started this little caper 16 months ago, and even my EQ Beacon 5.0 was up over 100 at the 13th month mark, but reaching 760 is another two or more years out. Severely diminishing returns once the intitial accounts are firmly established (past the six month / maybe year age on the tradelines).
The only thing that shifts my FICO by anything close to 50 points is letting my util report or not.
Some months I will be at 25-50% util, so if I don't pay until after the statement cuts then it impacts my scores accordingly. It corrects itself the next month if my charges aren't as high, but there can be a decent-sized swing from one month to the next. Otherwise my credit has always been pretty good.
In my case I am going to have to wait for a major baddie to come off and my accounts to age. I don't see hitting 800 til 2016 but I do have a plan which I am executing to make that happen. What I did was establish several new tradeline which I plan to keep healthy. The biggest jump in score so far was when I got my tax lien withdrawn. My TU score jumped from 519 to 623 and my EQ from 625 to 655. It definately depends on the particulars of your credit file what you need to do. However in the opinion of most on this website, the difference between 760 and 800 is just gravy/ bragging rights because you already have excellent credit and will qualify for the top tier of almost all loan offers.