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Your credit score is probably something you don’t pay a huge amount of attention to. But when you need it to buy a home, for example, it can play a huge role in ensuring you’re getting a best mortgage for your property. With that being said, here are some tips to improve your credit score to help with various things in life.
Pay Back Debt Quickly
Debt is something that any of us can accrue over time given the ease of getting credit. However, it’s one thing that you want to be actively staying on top of to ensure your balances don’t get out of control.
Just because you have debt, doesn’t mean it’s something you can push to the back of your mind. Paying it back should be something that you prioritize and do as quickly as possible. The reason for this is that if you’ve got late fees or missed payments, this could harm your credit score. These will show up on your credit report and will be seen by potential lenders.
If you’re not great at remembering to pay back debt, then try to set yourself some reminders where you can to help. It could be putting a reminder in the diary or setting up direct debits or standing orders so that the money comes out of your account automatically. That way, you neither have to think about it nor worrying about having to pay it.
Borrow Responsibly
Actively borrowing money is something that you want to be doing in order to improve your credit score. Sounds a little backward right? Well when you borrow money and pay it back, this tells a potential lender that you are less of a risk of defaulting or failing to make payments to them. That means they’ll end up offering you more money to spend and then to pay back. Money People is a great place to get advice on things like your credit score and how borrowing can be beneficial for you.
Multiple Cards Or Loans
It’s good to take a bird’s eye view of credit cards or loans that you have.
When it comes to credit cards, it is often beneficial to have a few which you have a low utilsation rate on (around 30% is a good rule of thumb), rather than one which you are approaching the credit limit.
You may want to explore consolidating multiple balances into one loan. This way you will only have one balance to tackle and one lender to deal with. The downside is that you often need to offer collateral for a consolidation loan e.g your home.
Make Sure You’re On The Electoral Roll
And finally, make sure you’re on the electoral roll in order to improve your credit score. It’s a small thing but something that can impact the level of your credit score, so it’s definitely worth doing if you can.
Improving your credit score is something you should always be conscious of doing where you can, regardless of where you are in life. It’s always relevant to keep it healthy and at a good level.