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Credit scores, credit reports, disputes, monitoring, and building or repairing credit. Know what moves your score and raise it before you need to borrow.
Interest and late fees are the bulk of what cardholders pay their card issuers, and on most cards you can stop both with one autopay setting. Set autopay on each card to its full statement balance, paid by the due date from an account that can always cover it.
Two or three credit cards cover most people: an everyday card, one that pays more where you spend the most, and maybe a backup or travel card. Before you open another, make sure it would earn meaningfully more than your current cards on what you actually buy, after any annual fee, or fill a gap they leave.
After a bankruptcy, the sooner you start adding on-time payments, the sooner your credit score recovers. Once your discharge comes through, check that every discharged debt shows a zero balance on your credit reports. Then open one new account, pay it on time every month, and keep any card balance low.
Federal law gives you free credit reports, free investigations of errors, free credit freezes, and a way to stop preapproved credit offers. Don’t save them for the day you apply. Once a year, pull your reports from all three credit bureaus, dispute anything wrong, freeze your credit, and opt out of those offers.
A zero balance doesn’t protect your credit score when you close a credit card and carry balances on your other cards. Its limit stops counting toward your available credit, so those balances take up a bigger share of it. Pay them down first, and if you’re applying for a big loan soon, wait until it’s final.
Dispute any error on your credit report, from a late payment you never made to an account you don’t recognize, with each bureau that lists it. It’s free. The bureau must investigate within 30 days, or 45 in some cases, and correct or delete anything the company that reported it can’t verify.
A credit card for bad credit that skips the deposit often makes up for it with fees, and unlike a secured card’s deposit, fees never come back. Unless that card’s fees total zero, a no-fee secured card costs less. Before you apply, add up the fees for the card’s first two years from its pricing table.
Medical debt hurts your credit score less than it used to, and how much depends on which score a lender pulls. Newer scoring models count medical collections less or ignore them entirely, while older FICO versions still count them in full. Before you apply for a mortgage or car loan, ask the lender which score it uses.
Paying off a credit card usually lifts your credit score, but only once the issuer reports the lower balance to the credit bureaus, typically after your next statement closes. Allow up to two months for the higher score to show, and keep the card open, since closing it can undo part of the gain.
Before you apply for a credit card, check for six common triggers of a denial: a low score, high card balances, recent applications, a thin credit history, low income, and a credit freeze. Start at least a month ahead, so you can pay balances down and lift any freeze before an issuer pulls your report.
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