Start NOW: Building Solid Credit in Every Stage of Your Life (Part IV)
Written by James Chan, Dongmiao Cui   


Now that we know the various components of a credit report, we can now move on to discussing strategies that can help boost your credit rating. Building a good credit score is extremely important, as it can help you:
  • Pay less to get mortgages, car loans, and other credit;
  • Be more likely to get offered a job;
  • Get brokerage or bank accounts with minimal haasle;
  • Pay less, perhaps much less, for insurance.
This section walks you through the four stages of your credit life: and outlines direct, actionable ways that you can use to up your credit score in each of these stages.


Matured


No, I don’t mean your mindset. Now, your credit has reached what we call the matured level, with 10 plus years of credit history and a respected line of credit.  You probably have gone through or are in the middle of your first mortgage.  The focus now is on credit maintenance and monitoring, keeping your credit score in the 750 to 780 range.  It is actually not as hard as how many experts make it sound; you just need to take patience and careful credit management. The keyword to pay attention to is balance.
 
This assumes the following:
  1. You have done most or all of the actionable items noted above - those are the low hanging fruits that you should pick as soon as possible;
     
  2. Your credit report is free from errors and no delinquent accounts;
     
  3. You have been keeping up with a healthy debt to credit ratio.
Things you should concentrate on at this stage:
  1. Credit Monitor: you should subscribe to a credit-monitoring program.  This typically runs for $50 to $100 a year.  In return, you are able to pull a new credit report every day and it is always a soft pull.
     
  2. Identity Security: identity theft can ruin your credit faster than you can imagine.  Most credit monitor programs come with some sort of identity theft prevention feature

Return to Part III: Credit Building - New College Graduate

 

 
Last Updated on Saturday, 25 December 2010 05:27