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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.
A credit card denial isn’t always final. The letter the issuer must send gives the reasons or tells you how to ask for them, so read it first. Then call the issuer’s reconsideration line within a few days and answer those reasons directly, because a second look by an analyst can reverse the decision.
When a card account has a long, clean payment record, joining it as an authorized user can put its years of history on your credit report in one step. Before anyone adds you, confirm the card’s issuer reports authorized users to the credit bureaus, past history included. If it doesn’t report them, you gain nothing.
Open the Capital One Platinum Secured Credit Card if you’re rebuilding credit or starting from scratch and want a $200 credit line for as little as $49 down. It has no annual fee but pays no rewards, so first see if you’re pre-approved for Discover’s secured card, which takes the same deposits and pays cash back.
Closing a credit card over its annual fee costs you its credit limit and, eventually, its history on your report. Call the issuer and ask what it will offer to keep you. If the offer falls short, ask to switch to a no-fee card from the same issuer, which keeps the account open.
A secured credit card is made for bad or no credit. A refundable deposit backs it and usually sets your limit, and your on-time payments build credit like any card’s. Choose one that reports to all three credit bureaus, charges no annual fee, and spells out how you earn the deposit back.
To anyone who pulls it from your mailbox, a preapproved credit card offer announces your name, your address, and that a lender has already picked you. Opt out of these prescreened offers at OptOutPrescreen.com or 1-888-5-OPT-OUT, the free service the credit bureaus run, and the offers drawn from your credit report stop coming.
An accurate late payment can still come off your credit report if the lender that reported it agrees to remove it. If it’s your only late payment and the account is current, ask the lender in a short goodwill letter. Some lenders refuse, but a yes removes a mark that can stay seven years.
Before you ask your card issuer for a higher credit limit, find out whether the request triggers a hard inquiry. Some issuers review requests with a soft inquiry that never affects your score, while others run a hard one. Read the request’s terms or call your issuer, and back out if the answer is hard, unless your balances run high.
In most states, car insurers price your policy partly on a credit-based insurance score, so better credit can cut your premium. The savings won’t show up until an insurer checks your credit again. Once your score climbs, ask your insurer for a new rate based on a current credit report, and get a few competing quotes.
Paying rent on time won’t help your credit score unless someone reports it to the credit bureaus, and most landlords don’t. Ask yours to start, or use a rent-reporting service that covers all three bureaus. Reporting helps most when your credit file is thin, and only with scores that count rent.
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