7 hacks to help increase your credit score

An excellent score usually means you’ll likely qualify for the lowest interest rates on personal loans, credit cards, auto loans, home loans, and other types of credit. However, if your score is low, your credit options may be limited and often come with high interest rates.

You may also not be able to qualify for certain necessities like an apartment or mobile phone plan, and even your auto insurance rates can be affected by a poor credit score. Taking steps to improve your credit score can help you qualify for the best rates and other goals that involve credit checks.

7 impactful hacks to increase your credit score

Building great credit takes time, but you can take action right away to start giving your credit a boost. And if you focus on factors that matter most when determining your credit score, you’ll likely see improvement quicker.

Whether you simply need to improve your score or are building credit from scratch, here’s a closer look at seven helpful hacks to increase your credit score fast.

1. Pay every bill on time

Payment history is the most important factor in your credit score—accounting for 35% of your FICO^® Score, the most widely used credit-scoring model.^[1][2] Paying your monthly credit card or personal loan payments late even a few times can knock valuable points off your score. So, the single best thing you can do to beef up your creditworthiness is to pay your bills on time.^[3]

Creditors typically report your payments once a month to the credit bureaus—noting if they’re on-time, late, or missed—so you’ll likely see your score change a few months after consistently paying your bills on time. Payments that are more than 30 days late can remain on your credit report for seven years, but you can lessen the impact by paying bills on time moving forward.^[4]

Need some help sticking to a bill-paying schedule? Try these tips:

Alert yourself. Use technology to your advantage. Log into your loan or credit card accounts and set up notifications. You can choose to receive text or email notifications when a bill’s due date is approaching.
Set up automatic bill pay. Have your credit card issuer or lender automatically pull the payment owed from your bank account before the bill is due.
Align your payment dates. Check with your lenders to see if they’ll allow you to change your monthly due dates. It’s much easier to remember one or two due dates a month than to keep tabs on all your bills separately.

2. Use less credit

Your credit utilization rate—or the percentage of how much credit you’re using compared to your total available revolving credit. For instance, if you have a $200 balance on a credit card with a $1,000 limit, your credit utilization would be 20%. Your credit utilization rate makes up 30% of your FICO^® Score.^[1]

Ideally, experts recommend using less than 10% of your available credit to qualify for the best rates. Try these tips to minimize your credit utilization ratio and improve your credit score:

Charge less on credit cards. If swiping your plastic too often is driving up your credit utilization ratio, try a different payment method whenever possible. Pay with a debit card, initiate a bank transfer, use a cash app like Venmo, or pay with plain old cash.^[3]
Pay down debt. Any balance you carry on your credit cards adds to your utilization ratio. If you’re struggling with high-interest debt, try a proven strategy for paying off your debt faster, like the snowball or avalanche methods. Or, a debt consolidation loan can help you pay off all your credit cards at a lower interest rate with one convenient payment.
Consider timing your payments. Credit card issuers usually report your account balance to the credit bureaus at the end of the statement period.^[4]You'll receive your statement at this time, and your bill is due a few weeks later. If you had a balance when your card issuer reported your account details, your utilization rate could rise unexpectedly—even if you paid off the balance when you got the bill. To help lower your utilization ratio going forward, pay off your balance before your statement period closes.

3. Request an increase to your credit limits

Keeping credit card balances low is one way to reduce your credit utilization. However, you can also lower your ratio by increasing your credit limits.^[3] Here’s an example: Suppose you still charge $200 to your card. Only now, your limit has increased from $1,000 to $5,000. Your new credit utilization ratio is just 4%—well below the recommended 10% cap.

Check with each of your creditors to see if you’re eligible for an increase to your credit limits. (If you’re not, find out when you will be.) While this hack is a good way to lower your credit utilization, it’s important not to increase your credit credit balances at the same time. Otherwise, you’ll be back to square one.

Keep in mind that requesting an increase to your credit limit might initiate a hard inquiry, which will appear on your credit reports. This might impact your credit score in the short term, but as long as you’re keeping your spending the same (or lower) and practicing good credit habits, it should bounce back quickly.

4. Don’t close old credit cards

The length of your credit history makes up 15% of your FICO^® Score.^[1] Potential lenders want to see that you have a long history of being responsible with debt, and credit cards you’ve carried for years can provide some of that evidence. While it may be tempting to close an old credit card you don’t use often, keeping it open can help you maintain a long credit history.^[3]

In general, leaving older cards open may help your credit score, but it's important to consider other factors as well, such as any annual fees you may be paying, or the need to reduce the temptation to spend. Be sure to use your open cards and try to pay them off each month to get the best scores.^[3]

Applying for new credit cards can also affect your credit history by decreasing your average age of accounts and potentially lowering your credit scores. A lengthy account history often takes years to establish, but closing an account may have an immediate negative effect.^[3]

5. Avoid applying for new credit (if possible)

New credit applications for credit cards and loans typically result in a hard credit inquiry, which can often lower your score by a few points temporarily. New inquiries make up 10% of your FICO^® Score.^[1]

To keep your credit healthy, try to only apply for new credit when you need it, and avoid making multiple credit inquiries in a short time frame—especially with credit cards. When shopping around for a new credit card or loan, check to see if the lender offers a prequalification tool. This can show whether you’re eligible for the credit and display your potential terms with just a soft credit pull, which won’t affect your score. Learn more about soft vs. hard credit inquiries.

In some cases, like comparing home, auto, or student loan rates, your credit may not be affected if you complete your rate shopping during a consolidated window of time, usually 14 to 45 days.

6. Become an authorized user

Having a family member or partner add you as an authorized user on their credit card can improve your score. It can take a month or two for the card issuer to report the account’s history to the credit bureaus with your name, but this hack is a great strategy to establish credit quickly—especially if you’re new to credit or rebuilding a poor credit history.^[5]

Keep in mind that how the credit card is managed will directly affect your score—even if you’re not the person using the card or paying the bills. Ideally, you’ll want to make sure the account has a low credit utilization rate and a positive payment history. However, this won’t be entirely in your control since you’re not the account owner.^[5]

7. Add to your credit mix

While not nearly as important as your payment history or age of accounts, your credit mix still makes up 10% of your FICO Score.^[1] Having a diverse range of credit shows lenders you can manage different kinds of debt.

People with high credit scores often have a mix of accounts, including auto loans, personal loans, and credit cards. However, before opening a new account for the purpose of adding to your credit mix, it’s still important to make sure you can take on the extra debt.^[2]

The bottom line No matter where you’re starting from, applying these valuable credit score hacks now to increase your credit score can make a difference. Like anything that is worth doing, building your credit score takes time. So, the sooner you incorporate these practices into your everyday life, the sooner you’ll be on your way to an amazing score and a brighter financial future.

It’s also a good idea to check your credit reports regularly to keep tabs on your scores and look for inaccuracies. You can request free copies of your credit reports from each of the three major credit bureaus—Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion—once a week at AnnualCreditReport.com. And if you find anything that doesn’t look right, be sure to get in touch with the credit bureau.^[3]

myFICO. “What's in my FICO Scores?”
myFICO. “FICO Score Remains the Most Widely Used Credit Score in the Securitization Market, Keeping Lender Confidence.”
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “How do I get and keep a good credit score?”
Experian. “How Often Is a Credit Report Updated?”
myFICO. “How do authorized user accounts impact the FICO Score?