5 Credit Card Tips To Boost Your Credit Rating And Get More From Your Money

Your credit card rating can be incredibly important, especially if you are looking for new credit or you are trying to finance a car purchase or get a mortgage. Having a high credit rating can open the door to lower interest rates and extra lending when you are making a big purchase. Here are five tips that should help you boost your rating and give you and your credit card some added consumer purchasing power.

Pay Down The Debt

This should not come as a surprise, but one of the most effective ways to boost your credit rating is to pay down your existing credit card debt. Too many people make minimum payments that barely cover the monthly interest. Try to keep your balance well below your credit limit. This not only creates a small emergency fund you can use if you have to, but it also boosts your credit rating.

Check out Tally’s guide on credit utilization to find out more. They help people reduce their interest rates to help boost their credit ratings. With their help, you can answer the question of how much of your credit card should you use and begin to build a better credit score. You can reduce your interest rates and pay more of your debt without increasing your payment.

Check Your Report

Simple errors and incorrect information on credit applications and consumer records can damage your credit rating. You can check your own report and look for errors and correct them to boost your credit and get a better rating. Small mistakes in address history or income can be very costly when credit agencies make their assessments.

The big three credit bureaus are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. They may all have information that different credit providers use to generate your credit rating. You should be able to get your report for them for free or for the cost of shipping. Check your details with all three agencies to make sure your credit history and data are accurate.

Budget Your Card Spending

Credit cards are a simple and convenient way to pay for goods and services, but their convenience can often lead people to neglect to manage their budget. Paying with plastic can be easy to forget. You have to monitor your spending at least weekly if not daily. Smartphone apps and credit card websites make this easy so there is no excuse not to.

Getting close to your credit limit on a card, or overspending slightly before making a payment, can have a negative effect on your credit rating. If you do this once or twice a month it will greatly reduce the chances of being able to raise your limit in the future or get extra credit from other sources. Have a budget for each card and stick to it.

Make Sure You Make Your Payments

Late payments are the number one cause of drops in credit ratings. Banks and lending agencies are looking for reliability as well as assets when they are assessing someone’s creditworthiness and scoring them. When you are late making your regular monthly payment your credit rating will be negatively affected almost immediately, and it can take months of hard work to get it back up.

You should have an autopayment set up to make a regular monthly payment to your credit card, and it should be above the recommended minimum payment. Always check to make sure the funds will be there to pay the autopayment. Your history of regular payments can account for more than a third of your credit score, so missing just one payment can seriously affect your ability to get credit in the future. 

Hold On To Your Credit Cards

The longer your relationship with your lenders, the better your credit scores. It can be tempting to make a lot of switches between credit card providers to take advantage of special offers and low interest rates, but this can have a negative effect on your rating. Try to have at least one card in your wallet that you hang on to, and use regularly.

Regularly using your cards, and making payments, helps to show your creditworthiness and that you can manage your credit responsibly. Having a long-term relationship with a lender makes other credit companies feel more confident about giving you more credit. This is not just true of credit card companies, but also of loans and mortgages too.

Follow these top tips to unlock the power of a boosted credit rating. With a better score, you can get access to better interest rates and higher credit limits, while saving money every month on your regular payments. Just one or two of these tips can make a big difference, and help you get the extra credit you need to buy a car or get a mortgage. You cannot afford to miss out on these top financial hacks.

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