Apparently there is a way to increase your credit score and it is probably not what you think it is. When asked this question randomly at a college, most students reported that the way to increase you credit score was to pay off your bills every month and on time. Some home owners said that the way to do so was to pay your mortgage on time and try to remove bad references from your credit records.
Still yet others mentioned tricks such as constantly querying the credit bureau and challenging them to respond to you within a period of time mandated by law. Truthfully, enough people mentioned the latter, that it appears that this somewhat underhand method has some validity in some jurisdictions.
The underlying thought process that most people have when confronted with this question is pay your bills on time and your credit rating will be great. But is this really true? We are going to call this myth number 1. So, let’s look at myth number 1. Loan institutions love people who pay off their bills on time every month. Ok, so I see huge bank profit in that model, right? If this were truly the case, how would a loan institution make any money? ha ha Loan institutions love people who maintain a balance that they can get charged interest on. And that’s the truth.
Ok, so what about Myth number two. “Loan institutions love people who borrow as much as possible.” If this second one were true, I wouldn’t be writing this article but simply running for the bank as fast as my little feet could carry me. Ok, seriously, if this were the case, people who couldn’t repay loans would get massive loans and constantly end up in bankruptcy courts. So perhaps between myth number 1 and myth number 2 we haven’t quite achieved a balance yet in terms of what banks don’t like. We know what loan institutions don’t like, but that doesn’t entirely answer what they do like.
Let’s cut to the chase. Banks and your, ahem, local mafia lender ( ohh are these two interchangeable ? ) love clients who pay more than the interest each month but not enough to seriously subtract from the actual principal amount. These are cherished suckers and enough of these on a banks balance sheets makes for a very healthy bank. These customers also have the ongoing income to keep their total loan amounts very much under the total allowed credit range. It is this loan to credit that more strongly influences whether a credit rating will be closer to 670 or 800. Lets look at an example, 35,000 in credit and 14,000 already used.
The keyword phrase “ongoing ability to pay ” is why some older retired persons with otherwise good credit may sometimes have difficulty refinancing longer term loans. Existing verifiable income is one of the underlying basis for credit that requires repayment. I think pension checks are income but for some reason lenders don’t rate those quite so highly.
So from what we have seen here, the best Candidate is not just someone who has no defaults on their credit rating, such a person may get to 650 on the credit score but may not be able to get a credit score of 800 or more. It is expected that most people who have been working on improving their credit scores will have few defaults though not many. So the key issue for those looking to increase their credit scores from 600 to 800 leans more towards something else.
That something else is the debt ratio. The key issue for getting credit card ratings above 6-700 is the debt/credit ratio.
Who then are the loan arrangers really searching for? That would be the gentle person with a credit to debt ratio which is not only low, meaning they have room to increase it, but someone who also has shown the long term ability to handle an ongoing balance. Come to the site and view the Credit Score Video then make a few quick changes to fix your score. Is 72 hours too long?
Trying for a loan, Mortgage or Lease. Increase your credit score first and get a better loan rate from your lender.
