building up your credit score is no simple task and it's critical for
future loans and big purchases it can feel like it takes forever to build up
but we'll show you some ways to boost your credit score very quickly so in
this video we're going to walk through 10 tips to start seeing immediate improvements
hey guys it's amber and jared here our goal here at holy city family is to empower you to achieve
financial independence and provide the best education to your children so that everyone
can pursue their dreams and ambitions and we named our channel holy city family because we live in
charleston we've always loved visiting the area and also in case you didn't know its nickname is
the holy city if it's your first time here thank you for joining us make sure to hit the subscribe
button and the bell to receive our weekly videos all of our videos are for informational purposes
only and do not constitute financial advice please do your own research consult a certified
and trusted financial planner who will put your interests above their own before following any
advice we may offer tip number one is use credit karma use this app and follow their personalized
advice and as we go through these tips we wanted to call out that on the screen you'll see
impact time commitment and speed so in the case of using credit karma it is a high impact tip
the time commitment is low to medium and you can see very fast results credit karma is a
free service that tracks your credit reports with transunion and equifax it also allows you to check
your credit score at any time and this provides personalized tips to help you improve your score
we have personally used this app for 10 years plus we're trying to remember what our credit score was
back then it was around the 600s and now it's uh 8 25 i think each of us are pretty close to that
right now so number two become an authorized user and here you want to think through trusted people
in your life that have a long established credit history and ask if they will add you
as an authorized user you may increase your odds by only asking to be listed as an authorized
user and not actually having access to the card or account and for us we've done this personally with
a family member and it's helped them boost their credit scores number three keep your oldest credit
card open and active this is something that i struggled with and just didn't realize when i was
trying to build up my credit score so we wanted to pass that off to you guys and use it every 12
months to make sure that you keep it active and so there's still purchases and transactions going
on and they wouldn't um the company that has that card wouldn't accidentally turn it off or
close it for you because then that would erase all that credit history that you'd have there close
your newer cards and accounts once balances are paid off to further increase your average credit
history tip number four limit hard inquiries so with here do your diligent research when looking
for a loan looking for the best rate terms and only allowing creditors to do a hard credit check
when you're absolutely certain that it's what you want to do hard enquiries actually stay on
your credit report for up to two years and then you you really want to take a look at it and like
target one to two hard inquiries at any given time one thing that i also do i just thought of this
is when people start asking me for my social security number or when they start asking you
asking if they can do an inquiry i always make sure to ask is this going to be a hard inquiry
inquiry or is this going to be as soft usually if they say it's hard i want to make sure that
i'm absolutely ready before they run that credit number five don't miss payments for this one make
sure you set calendar reminders when your payments are going through also set up automated payments
either through your checking account or a credit card and one thing that we like to do is if you're
doing the payments through a credit card make sure you're well aware of when that card expires
so that if it would accidentally expire then you wouldn't miss that payment yeah also pay
your bills right after you get paid to keep it simple at a consistent time um in the month like
for example we get paid monthly so we like to have that the payments usually go off for everything on
like the first or second of the month yeah number six make sure to use less than 30
of your limit on any one card and then certainly like don't use more than 30 overall on all on your
entire credit right with us you can see here we're going to show we use about 1 so we're looking at
181 out of that 25 000 which is our credit limit if you have a higher credit score you want to try
to use less than seven percent now make sure that you pay down balances before the billing cycle
ends or several times throughout the month to keep those balances low which will ultimately
increase your credit score number seven ask for higher limits the goal here is to increase your
credit limit but keep your balances the same or lower this instantly lowers your overall credit
card utilization and improves your credit score some lenders allow you to request this online
while others require a phone call number eight here you want to check and fix your credit report
errors so it actually takes time to identify those errors and file the disputes and then follow up on
any the progress that's made on those the credit viewers actually have 30 days to investigate
and respond to those disputes okay number nine is a tough one stop impulse spending so in a study
that we looked at over fifty percent of americans report impulse purchases over a hundred dollars
and twenty percent report purchases over a thousand dollars rather than allowing these
purchases to potentially damage your credit score ensure that the purchase is a must-have and also
wait for 24 hours before making that purchase i've heard a lot of people actually like write
that down and they put it on their refrigerator and they look at it and they make sure like is
this what i want or need right now and can anybody wait or do i just not need it and the last one
number 10 credit monitoring so here you want to prevent someone from stealing your identity
and ruining your credit uh that you're working so hard to increase or repair at that time all those
services are gonna help to identify that theft or that fraud for you so you can catch it before
it happens or like while it's happening so it won't really damage that credit that you've built
okay so let's recap number one use credit karma two add authorized user three keep oldest credit
cards active four limit hard inquiries five don't miss payments six pay balances strategically seven
increase credit limits eight fix credit errors nine stop impulse spending ten monitor credit hey
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