- Opened 3 revolving credit cards and a installment loan paid down to 8.9% (eg. student, mortage, car, SSL)
- Practiced AZEO.
- Paid all bills on time, every time.
- Practiced patience.
That's it in a nutshell. Educated myself by reading the forums. Learning from other peoples data points and experiences. The stickies are super helpful. As well as using the search function, if I needed to research a topic.
This is FICO so there really isn't anything fast as noted upthread.
There are no fast quick easy ways to improve credit. It takes time, patience and determination. Building or Rebuilding credit is a marathon, not a sprint. Pay your accounts on time and in full and your scores can only improve as long as you have taken care of your credit overall.
Several years ago, I accidently stumbled on one way to "game the system" to get a huge jump in your credit score, but it requires some pretty specific circumstances such as your credit score problems being caused solely by sky high utilization....
I had good credit in that I had 100% on time payments and no bad marks on my file. But my credit score was in the tank (relatively speaking) because I had a whopping 83% credit utilization. My credit score was running from 601-618 depending on the bureau. Well one day I woke up and realized half my income was going to interest. My employer offers the option of borrowing against your retirement account. So I took out a 5 year loan for $50,000 and paid off every one of my credit card accounts. Credit Utilization went from 83% to 0% overnight (well actually about 30 days before it hit all the credit bureaus). Now the thing about this type of loan, is since you are borrowing against your own money it is not reported to any credit bureau whatsoever. So my credit score suddenly jumps from 601 to 778! I now have credit card companies breaking their back to massively increase my credit limits, and offering me super premium cards with sky high limits.
Now the thing is, did my financial situation REALLY improve any? No, not really. I just "robbed Peter to pay Paul" as the old saying goes. The money I have going out every month is unchanged (less than $100 difference) because now I have $900 taken out of my paycheck every month to pay back my retirement account loan instead of sending the same amount to pay my credit cards. My financial situation certainly did NOT improve +177 points worth.
The thing is credit scores are good measures of your financial situation but they are far from perfect. Like any metric they are only as good as the information they get in. If something is not reported, like the loan against my retirement account, as far as the credit scoring systems are concerned it doesn't exist. All they are factoring is that I suddenly reduced my credit utilization to 0%. Did I get a better paying job? A huge bonus at work? A big inheritance from Uncle Sugar? A loan from a mafia loanshark? Win a lawsuit? Hit it big in Vegas? The Scoring Systems don't know or care, they have no way of tracking any of those variables. All they are tracking is, last month I was a financial trainwreck using 83% of my available credit, this month I'm a financially responsible credit guru using 0% and whatever the reason that's absolutely terrific! Have a 177 point bump in your credit score
