How Long Does it Take to Build or Improve your Credit Score?

You really do need to take your credit score very seriously, because it’s the key to so many financial aspects of your life. It will determine if you can buy a house, buy a car, start a business and myriad other things.

Now you may be wondering how long it will take to build your credit back up. Sadly again, the answer is that it could take a (long) while. How many years depends on what your current credit score is, and what steps you are taking to rebuild it.

Monitor Your Credit

You can use credit monitoring to discover potential errors on your credit file. By reporting these errors to the relevant credit agencies, you can instantly boost your credit score.

The Authorized User Technique

Another lesser-known credit trick is becoming an authorized user. Basically, you ask someone (like parents or other family members) if you can become an authorized user on one of their credit cards. Once you are authorized, your own credit score will benefit from their credit history (on that card).

Pay the Right Debts Down

For example, a full 30% of your credit score comes from credit utilization. In this case, “utilization” looks at how much you are using individual cards and your overall available credit. To have good credit utilization, you should use no more than 30% of the available credit for each card.

Sounds a but counterintuitive, but as I just mentioned, one of the biggest factors of your credit score is the percentage of used credit vs available credit. The lower the percentage the better.

Get More Credit!

Wherever you fall in terms of “bad credit,” you need to realize that rebuilding that credit may likely to take years…sorry. It’s a marathon and not a sprint.

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