What to do about low credit score

[MoneyTard]

Hi,

The last 2 times I pulled my credit score (which was about 4 years ago) it was around 740-760. I was happy with it.

Today I pulled my score again and find that it is 666-680 depending on the bureau. The things that have changed have included buying a house and financing a car (Which we just paid off the balance of last week)

There are several delinquencies (dh and I were sloppy the last couple years). One CC has 2-3 late payments 30,60. experian has a 90 day delinquency. With our car loan, experian has no delinquencies while the other 2 have a 30 day delinq.

Aside from the obvious (paying our stuff on time from now on) is there anything we can do to help it along?

Do you know if credit card co's will remove any of these delinquencies if we ask?

thanks!

[sweeps]

There are lots of gimmicks out there, but the real way to improve your credit is getting (and staying) current on your accounts.

The credit card companies have little incentive to wipe the slate clean on your delinquent accounts.

[jIM_Ohio]

use credit and pay it off timely.

[MoneyTard]

Originally Posted by jIM_Ohio

use credit and pay it off timely.

I wonder which would help out more.

1) Using our cards and paying them off on time, or
2) not using our cards at all.

?

[jIM_Ohio]

In order for score to improve, you need to use the credit you have frequently.

Credit is not a game. I don't care what my score is (if your score is higher than mine, what do you win?).

My score happens to be between 720 and 760. I have two car loans and a mortgage in my name. Everything else is ZERO balance unless we are traveling.

[MoneyTard]

Now does it matter which cards I use frequently? should I use the ones with delinquencies more than the ones without. this is interesting.

Originally Posted by jIM_Ohio

Credit is not a game. I don't care what my score is (if your score is higher than mine, what do you win?).

oh I realize that, but dh and I would like to buy into a larger house in a few years. With better Fico scores, we'd be eligible for lower rates.

[jIM_Ohio]

Originally Posted by MoneyTard

Now does it matter which cards I use frequently? should I use the ones with delinquencies more than the ones without. this is interesting.



oh I realize that, but dh and I would like to buy into a larger house in a few years. With better Fico scores, we'd be eligible for lower rates.

now you're talking- you have a reason to have a good score, so you need to play the game. Use credit cards to buy what you normally buy (groceries, gas) and pay it in full each month.

Please not your scores are NOT bad.

Here's some measures:

If you use a card with a low limit, you know you're doing well when they increase your limit.

If you use a card with a high limit, this may impact SHORT TERM credit scores some (because there is a cateogry which suggests the credit score only wants you to use around 40% of available credit). It's not clear to me if this is "overall" or "per account".

Find a rewards card which has value to you. We just received an offer for a GMAC credit card which would send 1% of our purchases to paying down our mortgage... not a bad deal. But we refinanced the GMAC mortgage this week, so no reason to use that offer.

[MoneyTard]

thanks for the info. I just realized one of the things that may have hurt it is the fact that bank of america closed my mbna card because i hadn't used it in more than 12 months. That card had the highest credit limit of them all it was about 26k.

[aurielle]

Here's a really good website for do-it-yourself credit repair

www dot creditboards dot com

Lots of good information and helpful people - be sure to read the Newbies Start Here thread before posting questions.

I apologize in advance if posting other websites isn't allowed on this board.