How to Improve Your Credit Score, According to Experts

It’s no secret you need a strong credit score if you want a popular credit card or a good rate on a loan. But earning a good credit score—typically 670 or higher in the popular FICO model that most lenders use—can take work.

And with so much advice out there, it’s hard to know what’s really effective. That’s why we asked four credit experts what they think of common credit score tips—and how you can really make the most of them.

Tip: Lower your “credit utilization ratio”

How it can help: Building your credit can take time. However, working on your utilization ratio might provide quicker results. Credit utilization affects the “amounts owed” component of your FICO score, responsible for 30% of your score.

A credit utilization ratio is the percentage of the available credit you use. For instance, if you have a balance of $300 on a credit card that has a limit of $3,000, your credit utilization ratio is 10%. The conventional advice is to keep that number below 30% to avoid hurting your credit.

One way to do it include requesting a higher credit limit. In the scenario above, if you doubled your credit limit—or got an additional credit card with the same credit limit—your credit utilization would go down to 5%.

What experts say: Experts agree that if your spending stays the same and your credit limit goes up, your credit utilization ratio will drop. You might see positive changes to your credit as soon as your new credit limit makes it to your credit score report.

However, this approach only works when you don’t increase your spending. In reality, many people will spend more when given more credit, says Kenneth Chavis IV, a financial planner at wealth-management firm LourdMurray in Los Angeles. This will likely offset the benefit of a higher credit line—and put you into more debt.

To avoid falling into this trap and going over the 30% threshold, always keep an eye on your balance, says Beverly Harzog, author of five books about credit and personal finance.

“Let me give you one more insider tip real quick,” she adds. “If you really want to boost your score a lot, keep your ratio under 10%. People, including myself, who have scores over 800—that’s what we do.”

Tip: Pay bills on time

How it can help: If there’s one thing you shouldn’t do to your credit, it’s missing a payment. Payment history is responsible for 35% of your FICO score, more than any other factor. A late payment gets reported when you miss the due date by at least 30 days and can result in a significant hit to your credit score. Moreover, it will stay on your credit report for seven years. For that reason, you want to make sure you consistently pay your bills on time.

What experts say: There’s no denying the importance of on-time payments. All the experts we’ve talked to recommend using autopay and setting up reminders, as well as paying down the balance before the statement closing date.

Yanely Espinal, director of educational outreach at Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit providing personal finance curriculum to middle and high-school teachers, has automated all of her bill payments. She also makes extra payments before the statement closing date—the last day of a billing cycle—instead of waiting to pay the entire balance on the due date.

The balance on the statement closing date is what a credit card company reports to credit bureaus, so you want it to be as low as possible. By making additional payments during the billing cycle, when Espinal’s statement comes, her balance on the closing date is low. It “helps me to keep my credit utilization ratio very low,” she says.

To ensure you don’t forget to pay, set up email reminders or other alerts. Some budgeting apps will send you notifications when a payment is due.

You can also set up free text or email alerts with your credit card company to remind you when your bill is due. Finally, consider autopay. With this service, your card issuer will deduct the payment from your linked bank account. This can be very convenient but proceed with caution: You’ve got to always be sure you have enough money in your account to cover credit card payments.

Tip: Pay down debt

How it can help: You can bring down the amounts you owe by paying down your debt. That includes not only your credit cards but also your installment loans, such as a car loan or a mortgage.

Bringing down balances on your cards and loans will benefit your credit by lowering your credit utilization ratio and your overall debt. Not to mention, this may be great for your overall finances too. The quicker you pay off a debt, the less you’ll pay in interest.

What experts say: While paying down debt is good for your credit, if you pay off an installment loan in full—for example, a car loan or student loan—it may cost you some credit points. This happens because paying off an installment loan means you’ll have one less account reporting on-time payments to the bureaus.

“That might hurt just a little bit, but paying it off is going to feel really good,” Espinal says. “Don’t let that deter you from making aggressive payments.”

Chavis also suggests prioritizing paying down expensive debt, which he considers anything with an interest rate of 7% or above. This usually includes credit cards, personal loans, and auto loans. (Mortgage rates have also been flirting with 7% recently, which may make paying extra toward your home loan more appealing than in a lower rate period.)

That said, it’s important to pick an approach that works for you. For people with high credit scores and high-interest debt, debt consolidation through a balance transfer card or a personal loan could be a good choice. Those with lower credit, on the other hand, might not qualify. Others may benefit from popular debt repayment methods, such as the avalanche method (paying down the debt with the highest interest rates first) and the snowball method (prioritizing the smallest debts first). The best one for you is the method you can stick with.

Tip: Get credit for rent payments

How it can help: It’s ironic that even small credit card purchases can impact your credit score, but paying for some of life’s biggest recurring expenses—notably rent—often won’t.

Luckily, there are options to make rent payments count toward your credit. Services such as Rent Reporters and LevelCredit allow you to add rent payments to some of your credit reports for a fee—typically, between $7 and $15 a month.

What experts say: Adding rent payments to your report can be helpful, especially if you’re new to credit or rebuilding it, according to experts.

Note, however, that most services that offer reporting rent payments to credit bureaus don’t work with all of them. For example, Rent Reporters, Rock the Score, CreditMyRent, and Rental Kharma only report to Equifax and TransUnion.

Even if rent shows up on your credit report, it may not affect your scores since not all credit scoring models include rent payments in credit score calculations. Because of these drawbacks, Espinal suggests considering additional ways to add positive information to your credit report. Some of the easiest options include becoming an authorized user on a family member’s credit card or applying for a secured credit card, which involves depositing money with the credit card issuer.

Still, if you’re new to credit or rebuilding yours, rent payments on your credit reports may benefit you even without impacting your scores. A credit score is only one of the factors lenders consider. They’re also likely to look at your history of payments to evaluate how responsible you are with your financial obligations.

“A potential lender might see that and they’ll think to themselves, ‘OK, they’re paying their rent on time…’ And that’s a plus for you,” Harzog says.

Tip: Dispute mistakes on your credit report

How it can help: It’s one thing to pay for your own credit mistakes with lower scores. It’s another thing to pay for errors on your credit report.

You can check your credit reports to make sure everything looks correct. You have the right to get a copy from each credit bureau—Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion—free once a week at AnnualCreditReport.com.

What experts say: “This one is all over YouTube and all over social media,” Espinal says. “People love to say, ‘Oh, I can help you with these disputes and getting all this information wiped off of your credit report.’”

In reality, filing disputes with credit bureaus isn’t a magic trick. Everything you submit will be investigated to ensure what you’re claiming is true. There’s also no way to remove correct information from your credit report even if it’s unflattering—unless it’s stayed there for too long. Most negative marks should fall off your credit reports after seven years.

That said, legitimate errors on your credit may be worth disputing. For instance, if you find a late payment on your credit report, but you know you paid on time, you might want to dispute and provide proof, such as a statement showing when you made the payment.

Another type of error that can cause havoc is an error in personal information.

“Let’s say your social security number is wrong on your credit report and your credit gets mixed up with somebody else,” Harzog says. While that might not lower your score, it could cause problems when a lender looks at your report to verify your identity. It’s also wise to check for any new accounts opened in your name. If they don’t belong to you, it’s a red flag for fraud. In this case, you’ll want to take steps to protect yourself, including placing a fraud alert or credit freeze on your reports.

Tip: Add a new credit account

How it can help: To improve your credit score, you need credit. That can be a tall order when your low credit score or lack of a score prevents lenders from approving you for a credit card, loan or other credit account. But opening a secured card or becoming an authorized user on someone’s account can help you get past this Catch-22 and begin growing your score.

The amount of time you’ve had active, open loans, credit cards and other kinds of credit accounts determines 15% of your credit score, while your payment history accounts for 35%. The longer you’ve held an account and made on-time monthly payments for that account, the better it is for your credit score. That’s because lenders feel more comfortable extending new loans to borrowers they know more about and who’ve displayed responsible repayment behavior in the past.

If you’re brand new to using credit, have a very limited credit history, or a poor credit report, your score could get a boost from managing a new credit account well.

What experts say: Regardless of your credit score or credit history, you may be able to open a secured credit card account or become an authorized user on another person’s credit card allowing you to begin building a good record of credit usage.

Secured credit cards require users to put down a cash deposit at opening and this amount then becomes the card’s available line of credit. Because you can’t spend more than the collateral, lenders are protected from loss and, thus, willing to extend this kind of credit to riskier borrowers, such as those with poor scores or no credit history.

“Secured credit cards aren’t treated differently than other accounts on your credit report or when factoring your credit score,” says credit expert Jason Steele, producer of CardCon, an industry conference, who has written for Buy Side. “If you get a secured card and use it responsibly for a year, you could see a significant jump in your score—as much as 100 to 200 points depending on how low your score was initially.”

Alternatively, you could ask a friend, spouse or relative with a solid credit score and lengthy credit history to add you as an authorized user on one of their credit card accounts. This allows you to benefit from their responsible behavior and improve your creditworthiness without needing to qualify for the card or becoming liable for payments.

“Becoming an authorized user is a quirk in the system,” says Steele. “Even when a person technically can’t qualify for credit on their own, say because they are under 18, they can become an authorized user and begin building a credit history.”

Those with no credit history or very thin credit files will likely see a bigger positive change to their credit score from hitching onto another account than those with a history of damaged or poor credit.

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