How To Build Credit - Here Is My Journey On How I Improved My Credit Score Over 150 Points
I can remember a couple of years back when I had a bad credit score, and more issues on my report than I care to think about. I had no clue on how to build credit. Here I was with a credit report in the low 500’s and nobody would approve me for anything, without ripping my head off with ridiculous interest rates. Luckily though I had a background working with credit, and that caused me to start to take a deeper look into how to build credit. I would like to share with you my story and how my credit has bounced back.
First it’s likely good for you to grasp where I started at. In 2003 I opened a company , and ended up not doing to well with it for some time. It was my first foray into being self-employed and this led to some real havoc on me financially. I couldn’t afford to put gas in my vehicle at times, much less the money to pay for my obligations in a timely fashion. I ended up getting things together, but by this time the damage was done. I had a couple of credit cards that ended up being charged off and the bill collectors were coming after me.
In December of 2007 I had an auto that started breaking down on me. I was twenty-eight years old and I needed to ask my father to cosign on a loan with me so I wouldn’t need to pay an interest rate at about 18%. By having him cosign for me I was able to get an interest rate at 4% and I continue to have that vehicle to this day. I have saved thousands of dollars in fees because of this. This, incidentally, was the 1st credit that I had since the problems I had in 2003.
With having this vehicle loan now reporting on time payments, finally I was ready to get accepted for a Mastercard in May 2008, but the limit on the card was only $400. While that was great and all, with my past credit score it took a long while for any other company to approve me for anything. Another option for me at this time also would’ve been to get a secured credit card to pair with the other credit I was establishing.
Come to find out, the credit limits on credit card accounts have a ton to do with our abilities to get more credit. The higher your credit limits, the better it is for your credit. Think about it, if you’re making an application for another credit card and had some problems during the past financially, then it’s very hard for any company to get a good read on whether or not you’d be a good loan risk. This holds particularly true if you’re available revolving credit is only $400.
This is when I started learning about credit repair. I had a choice to make. I could either wait for seven years minimum for this info to fall off my credit history, or I could kickstart things and learn how to do the credit repair. I selected to kickstart things, and I’m so ecstatic I did. To make a long story short, I’ve been able to get almost everything removed except two things, one being an open charge off account that has had some daft costs added to it. I could even bring a suit against this company because they’re clearly violating my rights because they have not been able to come up with a full accounting of how they got their figures. This account is scheduled to fall off in just a couple of months so I haven’t worried.
Obviously I have had a pretty important improvement in my scores with all three of the bureaus. I have now qualified for 2 more unsecured credit cards and will continue to see major enhancements in my scores over the next year. Now knowing exactly how credit works, I also got a $5,000 line of credit that reports to the bureaus. Now this isn’t a conventional account, and I can’t utilize it for much of anything aside from to get ebooks online from their site, but it is’s agreat account to have which has helped my credit score quite a bit, and opened up the door to afford me the opportunity to get the unsecured credit cards.
Had I not known how to build credit, or learned credit repair then I’d be nowhere near where i am at this time. This has got me thinking, because I’m truly no different than anyone else that has had problems financially during the past. The only difference is that I learned how to build credit and I would like to be in a position to share my experience and information with anyone that is ready to learn. These tactics work a hundred percent of the time if implemented correctly, but this is all done with the long term under consideration. If you have a long term vision you can also have these kinds of results.
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