So my question is what about people that aren't in debt, but need help improving their credit score? I had a lot of debt from about 5-10 years ago and it killed my credit score. The debt has all been paid off for a few years, I haven't had credit cards in years, and I still have a few notices from closed accounts that won't fall off for a few years.
So I'm currently doing what I can to remove the closed notices and have had some minor success. But a lot of people don't know the right things to do to improve their scores.
Having a service that tracks the 3 credit bureaus and provides guidance on steps to take to bring your score up would be mighty useful.
Go to your bank and ask about a secured loan. Basically, you put money in a CD and get 2% or whatever. The CD sits at the bank. You then get a loan for the same amount as the CD at 3% or so.
They've got your money in the bank, so it's no risk for them. You put the loan on auto-pay, you lose 1% per year to do this, but you get 12 of these kinds of transaction credits on your account which is good because they count differently than credit card.
I did it with $1100 and it cost me $10 or $15 or whatever, but I went from not eligible for a credit card with a limit over $250 to getting an uncapped charge card with good rewards in 12 months, which was very helpful in business. I don't know about getting the bad transactions off, but getting good ones on is important too. I don't know what the lowest amount you can do it with is, but I did it with two loans: one $1000 and one $100, and it worked well.
That raises flags for me, because as far as I know from what I've read, some of the key components of your credit score are 1. length of credit history (i.e. if the average age of your open credit lines is 0, then that's bad) and 2. credit limit (if you have no credit cards, you have no credit.
Certainly having no debt helps, but many of the other things hurt more than they help.
Once you hit the 7 year mark those late payments fall off your record. Just keeping your current bills paid on time is probably the best thing you can do if you already have several years without any problems.
I fell onto some hard times about ten years ago. Eventually I was able to pay the debt off but my credit was in the toilet for years. I went from a credit score of 530 to 600 and then it just sat there...and sat there..and sat there for a few years until the magic date passed where crap fell off and it jumped to 750.
The other lines of credit people are mentioning might be helpful, but in my case I just had to be patient. If I can manage to never take out a loan again in my life (it's been ~10 years) I'd love that. Debt sucks.
So I'm currently doing what I can to remove the closed notices and have had some minor success. But a lot of people don't know the right things to do to improve their scores.
Having a service that tracks the 3 credit bureaus and provides guidance on steps to take to bring your score up would be mighty useful.