It is important to understand how the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and Transunion calculate your credit scores. This is not something that a lot of people know, and I am sure you have never been taught this information.

Now I will keep it simple and explain how your credit scores are calculated…

35% – Payment History Your history of paying your bills (on-time, late, etc.). The largest factor of your score.

Credit Utilization 30%: The percentage of available credit used. Keeping your account balances below 50% of the available credit limit will maximize your scores. For the purpose of this article, this is where we will find the most room to quickly increase your scores.

Credit History 15%: A more seasoned account carry more weight than one that was just opened.

Recent Inquiries 10%: Whenever you apply for any kind of credit, a credit inquiry is reported. Too many of these, and they can negatively effect your scores.

Credit Types In Use 10%: The number of accounts in use, and the type of credit accounts. Finance company accounts are of the lowest value, and too many of them can cause a negative effect on your scores.

Now that we have a little knowledge under our belts, here are the 2 things you can do in the next 30 minutes to gain some points very quickly

Get an increased credit limit. This is very simple to do, and I think you will be pleasantly suprised by the success rate if you just make a couple easy phone calls. Just pick up the phone and ask to raise your credit limit. Now you can also use my favorite strategy and say something like, “I am considering a balance transfer to another card with a higher limit and better interest rate, but thought I would see first if you would increase my limit and possibly lower my interest before I cancel this card.”. I have found this to be successfull nearly all the time, both personally as well as with my clients.

Let’s say for example you have a credit card with a $5,000 credit limit, and you currently have a $4,000 balance on it (80% utilized). After your quick phone call, they agree to raise your credit limit to $6,500 (now 62% utilized). This alone will immediately increase your credit scores. Remember in the “Credit Utilization” section above, we want to ideally keep our balances below 50% of the credit limit. This brings us to the next powerful tip.

Lower Your Balances! Continuing from the example above, you are now 62% utilized on your credit card. This means you still have some room to further maximize your scores. If you pay $750 on this credit card, you will bring the balance down to 50% of the new credit limit ($3,250 balance on $6,500 credit limit). Now, you might be saying that you don’t have $750 to pay down your credit card. That’s ok, you could stop here, you have already increased your scores, and you can get the limit raised for all your credit card accounts. However, if you are trying to buy a home, or even a car, you can potentially save thousands in interest on your new loan and get a lower monthly payment, just by paying a little down on your current accounts. When that results in higher credit scores, you may qualify for much better loan terms.

These are very powerful techniques. I have seen this work for clients time and time again. One client recently was able to raise the credit limits on 3 credit card accounts and raise their scores by 105 points immediately.

These simple tactics are more appropriate for someone with a good payment history on established credit card accounts. It is recommended that you have at least 3 open credit card accounts to maximize your scores. One of these could be a department store account. If you don’t have enough credit, or have a negative credit history, perhaps more aggressive credit repair or credit building strategies would be more appropriate for you.