Tag Archives: cards
7 Ways To Protect And Improve Your Credit Rating
Your credit score accounts for the amount of interest you have to pay for a loan or a credit card. Increasing your score in just a few points will make a big difference in the interest rate you will pay for a purchase. If your credit score is high enough, youll have no problem qualifying for a lenders best rates and terms on auto financing, home loans and small business loans. The following are a few tips about how you can protect and improve your credit rating.
1 – Order Your Credit Report. Your credit score is based on your credit report, so you should begin by ordering your reports and reviewing each one for accuracy. You can get your reports from a service such as MyFico.com, or order from Equifax, Experian and Trans Union separately online or by phone.
2 – Check Your Credit Report Information for Inaccuracies. Check the identifying information for name, social security number, birth date and incorrect address. Make certain that old negatives and paid-off debts are deleted. Check for accounts and delinquencies that are not yours, late payments, charge offs, lawsuits, judgments or paid tax liens older than seven years old. Also, paid liens or judgments that are listed as unpaid, duplicate collections, bankruptcies that are older than ten years and any negative information that is not yours.
3 – Always Pay Your Bills on Time. Payment history makes up more than a third of the typical credit score. If you paid bills late in the past, you can improve your credit score by starting to pay your bills on time. Lenders are looking for any sign that you might default, and a late payment is a good indicator that you are in financial difficulty.
4 – Keep Credit Cards Balances Low. Carrying smaller balances is the best way to increase your credit score. The score measures how much of your limit you use on each credit card or other line of credit, and how much of your combined credit limits you are using on all your cards. Within 60 days, paying down credit card balances can increase your credit score by as much as 20 points.
5 – Try Not to Open In-Store Credit Cards. Although your first credit accounts can serve to build and improve your credit history, there comes a point when each subsequent credit application can reduce your score. New credit cards reduce the age of your credit history, and a department store credit card isnt good evidence of credit worthiness. Every time you apply for a retailers credit card your credit store gets dinged.
6 – Be Conservative When Applying For Credit. Having at least one credit card thats more than 2 years old can help your score by 15 percent. Make sure that your credit report is checked only when necessary. Or, if you are shopping for a home, try to apply for loans within a two-week period. By keeping the loan process within a two-week period, all of the credit report lookups are seen as one single request.
7 – Dont Close Credit Cards or Other Revolving Accounts. Shutting down unused accounts that have outstanding balances without paying off the debt changes your utilization ratio, which is the amount of your total debt divided by your total available credit. It will reduce the gap between the credit you are using and the total credit available to you, and that can hurt your credit score.
Instant Approval Credit Cards: The Advantage of Applying Online
Getting instant approval for a credit card and sometimes getting immediate access to use it can now be done in less than 60 seconds. No muss, no fuss like the old days when getting a credit card took a month or more. If you werent aware of how instant your approval could be, now is the time to find out.
Internet Technology and Security Behind the Scenes of Instant Approval
How did the instant approval credit card come about? The answer is that the Internet has completely changed the way card-issuing banks can research consumer information and make a decision about an applicants credit worthiness. Nearly every major financial institution that issues credit cards including Chase, CitiBank, American Express, HSBC, and others now allows you to use the Internet to fill out their application online with complete security, submit it with the click of a button, and then count the seconds while they make their decision. And in most cases, if your credit is good to excellent, you will be approved instantly and a credit card will be on its way to you within days.
Behind the scenes, instant approval credit cards use the speed of the Internet and the sophisticated communication networks created for the banking industry. When you submit your application, banks can now easily verify your identity and check with one or more of the three national credit bureaus Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union to ensure that your FICO score meets their application criteria. (Your FICO score is a mathematical calculation performed by each of the credit bureaus that rates your credit history on a scale of 0 to 800.)
The Benefits of Instant Approval
If youre wondering why you might want to take advantage of this instant approval service to get your next credit card, there are several good reasons:
1. Many banks periodically offer special promotions on their credit cards, such as 0% APR on purchases and/or balance transfers for a specified period of time or bonus travel miles on airlines. These are offers you may not hear about if you dont browse the Internet looking for instant approval credit cards.
2. There can be a value in knowing quickly if you will be approved for a credit card if you find yourself needing additional credit for your business or personal needs. Using paper applications and the US mail will usually take 4 to 6 weeks before you know if you are approved.
3. You can sometimes get immediate access to a portion of the credit line for which a bank approves you. For example, some banks will offer you $300 to $500 that you can tap into immediately using a code they give you.
4. Applying for a credit card using a secure Internet site can actually be safer than filling out a paper application with your personal information and mailing it. Secure Internet sites use 128-bit encryption which is considered unbreakable in the computer security field. (You can tell when you are at a secure Internet site because your web browser contains a small icon that looks like a lock down at the bottom of the page.)
A Sensible Advantage
So the next time you are pondering your credit card needs and feel that you can benefit from a new credit card, consider looking into an instant approval card. In todays fast-paced world, you may agree that this new form of getting a credit card makes a great deal of sense for consumers.