How Quickly Can You Increase Your Credit Score?

Credit scores are an important part of personal finance. A good credit score allows you to qualify for home, auto or other types of loans, while a bad credit score likely will prohibit you from qualifying. However, even bad credit scores improve over time, as long as you put in the effort to fix them. The speed at which credit scores improve depends on how quickly you can resolve financial issues dragging your credit score down as well as how soon credit card companies and other agencies report the improvements to the credit bureaus.

Time Line

Major credit score repair can take several months or even years, depending on how bad your current score is, according to the Repair Bad Credit Report website. MSN indicates that to get the best interest rates, you should shoot for a score of 760 or above. If your score is a few hundred points below that, expect the process to take at least a few months, depending on how fast you can resolve the issues by paying down debt and becoming current on other payments. However, you will start to see small improvements rather quickly, often within a few weeks or a month if you are able to pay off some debt and get rid of past-due payments quickly. Becoming current on just one account will improve your score a few weeks after it is resolved.

Analyze Credit Report

To quickly improve your credit score, you must first examine your credit report to see what is dragging your score down. Obtain a free copy of your credit report at the Annual Credit Report website (see Resources). Examine the report for any errors, or for any items that you have already resolved, and address those issues first. For example, if you paid off a credit card but it still shows up on your credit report, contact the credit card company and ask it to report the paid-off debt to the credit bureaus. Then address any lingering issues. The more credit issues you have, the longer it takes to increase your credit score.

Pay Down Debt

One of the fastest ways to improve your credit score is to get out of debt. This might take months or years, depending on how much debt you have and how much money you can make to pay it off. The more you work and the more money you make, the faster you can get rid of debt and the faster you will see credit score improvements. Try to get your balances on credit cards to 30 percent or less of your total available credit to improve your score, according to MSN. Also, pay any past-due payments and bring all accounts current. The longer an account is past due, the worse your credit score is, but bringing all accounts current will improve your credit score a few weeks after the past-due status is eliminated.

Reporting to Credit Bureaus

Credit scores improve after your creditors report the resolved issues to credit bureaus. Most credit card companies report to credit bureaus once a month, so if you make a payment in March, it will likely be reported and show up on your credit report in April. Stay in close contact with your credit card companies and other creditors and ask them to report any improvements to the credit bureaus as soon as possible to improve your credit score quickly.

Use Credit Responsibly

Once debt has been paid down and accounts are brought current, you need to use credit responsibly to continue to improve and maintain a good credit score. Your credit score actually will go down if you do not use credit at all. So, open a credit card or use an existing one, and use it to make purchases you know you can afford. Make payments each month to keep the balance at 30 percent of the available credit or lower. Ideally, you should pay it off completely each month, then make more purchases and pay those off again the next month.