Not a whole lot to be done in your case, I'm afraid. You seem to be doing everything right outside of those lates and slightly excessive inquiries. The lates are what are holding you down. Especially the one from last year. Try writing GW letters and hoping they'll remove your lates, but odds are slim.
And by the way, closing cards won't hurt you unless your utilization spikes and you cross a utilization threshold/multiple utilization thresholds. But since you have less than 1% utilization, that should be a non-issue. If it's credit age you're worried about, your closed accounts will remain on your reports for up to 10 years, so your Average Age of Accounts (AAoA) will remain unchanged until then.
No, don't dispute. You shouldn't be disputing accurate information. Not only does that hurt your score, it's also not allowed to be discussed on here.
And you're welcome.
@Anonymous wrote:I am sitting around 720s.
2 late payments in my history, one around 2016 or so and the other last year. Not my fualt, but I was also on those loans so should have kept them accountable. Lesson learned, never signing for anyone ever again.
3 homes on credit. One I am in the process of getting refinanced out of.
1 personal loan
9 open cards with 36k or so under 1% utilization
22 inquiries, yes I know very high, I could have been smarter about it, but I do some real estate.
What can I do better to help push my score to the next level. I do not like the idea of having a lot of cards, I almost want to close a few of them but I know that will hurt my score. If I could have like 5 cards that I actually use, that would be great. Right now I really only use 1 or 2.
@OmarGB9nailed it. I'll just add with 4 loans the util % on them could be holding you down also. Loans do their most good once they are all under 8.9%. And the lates.
