Patience and your Credit Score, Both a Virtue

Surely you have heard the phrase, “patience is a virtue”. Simply defined this means to tolerate delay. When it comes to your credit score, you must have patience. Whether you are building, or rebuilding, it takes time and there are no quick fixes.

First things first. Open both a checking and a savings account. It looks good on a credit application to have both. At this point, don’t worry about how much is in there, just have both.

Secured credit cards are an excellent way to get on the path to credit heaven. Regardless of your credit rating, anyone can get a secured card. Reason being is the lender is completely free of risk because you deposit the max credit limit with the bank that issues the card. They’ve got your money!

Make sure that whoever is issuing the secured card is reporting your good pay habits to all three credit bureaus. Otherwise no one will know that you’ve been paying on time and building up good credit. As long as you have been making on time payments for an extended period of time, you may be awarded an unsecured card and get your initial deposit back.

At any point during your credit journey, never carry a balance on any card that totals more than 35% of the available credit. For example, if you opened a secured card with a $1000 deposit never ever float a balance of more than $350 from one month to the next. You don’t want future lenders to think you’re strapped.

Get at least three lines of credit. Whether it be a combination of an auto loan and two secured cards, or three secured cards. Pay the balances off each month if possible and you are on your way to better credit scores.

Patience Grasshoppa. Count on 12 to 24 months of squeaky clean credit before your credit scores shoot up. You must demonstrate to the world that you are financially responsible and can handle up on your business. In the long run you’ll have a much easier time getting approved for larger loans like mortgages. If you have any questions about your credit feel free to email us at troy@creditscorecowboy.com.

http://www.creditscorecowboy.com/ is your source for free credit scores, credit monitoring, identity theft software your free credit report and a blog with a wealth of information about credit. People around the world depend on us for expert advice on how to maintain a healthy credit score.