If your credit score is low, you will end up having to pay higher rates when purchasing or renting vehicles to drive for Uber or Lyft. While a low credit score can certainly cost you money, it doesn’t have to be a drain on your life. There are plenty of different ways you can work to improve your credit score that shouldn’t be too difficult. Below, we will be going over some of the tips to increase yours today.
Tips To Increase Your Credit Score:
1. Become An Authorized User
One of the best ways to really improve your credit score if you have a lack of history is by ‘piggybacking’ off of someone else. If you have a relative or spouse that has good credit and a good track record of making prompt payments, you will be able to build your credit by giving you longer credit history. Being able to lengthen your credit history this way can drastically improve your credit if it was previously insufficient.
2. Make Payments
If you are someone that suffers from poor credit due to poor payment history, you will want to begin to rectify it as best possible. By scheduling smaller payments throughout the month, you can minimize your credit utilization and increase your score accordingly. The fewer credit utilization you have, the higher your score will be. After all, creditors view those with high credit utilization as increased risk. Therefore, by keeping your balance down through mini-payments throughout each month, you should be able to improve your score relatively quickly.
3. Check Your Reports
Your credit score might be getting dragged down due to a mistake with your credit history. This is why you regularly want to pull your credit reports and keep tabs on the three major bureaus. You are able to pull a single report every month months from each of the major bureaus which means that you should be able to effectively keep tabs on your credit to avoid having a mistake pull your score down. By planning your pulls properly throughout the year, you should be able to schedule the three credit reports in a way that allows you to check up on your credit report once every 4 months.
4. Get Different Types Of Credit In Your Name
If possible, you can switch your family’s phone service, television service, and even Internet service into your name. Having different kinds of credit can help you build better credit history and it will ultimately make you look better in the eyes of creditors. You can even mix in installment payments into your credit profile to mix it up even more. Therefore, you should be looking to get different kinds of credit in your name to prove that you are responsible for various forms of credit.
5. Pay Everything On Time
When you are looking to drastically improve your score in a short period of time, one of the best things that you will want to do is to pay everything on time. If you must, pay the minimum on your credit cards. By making your payments on time, you will be able to establish a pattern of consistency. The best way to ensure that you are able to make each and every payment on time is by scheduling auto-pay with all of your credit cards. By scheduling the minimum with each one of your cards, you should be able to not only avoid having a late payment on your records, but it can save you from paying the hefty late fees as well.
6. Don’t Apply For Multiple Cards
If you are looking to improve your credit for something specific like the best financing rates for purchasing or renting a vehicle, you will want to avoid pulling your credit at least 12 months prior to doing so. Every time you get a ‘hard pull’ on your credit, your score will drop 10 or more points. While this might not seem like much, it can mean the difference between getting an excellent rate and an average one. Therefore, you will want to avoid making multiple inquiries on your credit prior to getting financing rates.
Overall, there are plenty of different things that you can do to boost your credit relatively quickly. Bad credit doesn’t have to completely ruin your ability to score great rates. There are easy things that you can do to make progress in improving your credit. Follow the tips above and you should be able to do so effectively.