Last minute ways to increase your credit score (like in a month or two)?

[baytostay]

I was watching some CNBC show on personal finances and they said that they used to give the advice to just keep your old credit cards that you didn't use open and they would help your credit, but now they suggest closing inactive accounts.  I don't remember what their reasoning was, but I think there might be some sort of penalty for inactive accounts, or too many lines of credit or something.

[Momo09]

besides the obvious like not making payments is bad, these are general simplifications:


too much (high credit lines without ability to pay, or too many accounts) or too little credit are both bad.

Longer you have an account the better.
Too much activities is bad ( opening too many or closing too many accounts)
paying off loans is good (buy a car, pay the loan off)
too many revolving accounts is bad.

[habeas dorkus!]

There's some very bad advice being thrown around in this thread. What you should do depends on the balance on each of your credit lines. While having several lines of credit generally lowers your credit score, closing lines of credit if you have substantial balances will also hurt your credit score, since agencies look at your utilization ratio, or the ratio of total debt to available credit. There is a wealth of information about credit scores (and quickly raising them) available on the internet; this is one time when Googling is of enormous utility.

[SouthSide]

I was watching some CNBC show on personal finances

No surprise that this sentence is followed by this one:

There's some very bad advice being thrown around in this thread.

[queencruella]

wait...so if i'm reading this correctly... your credit score drops if you close out a card?

yes

The way I understand it is that your credit score drops when you open a new account, but that isn't the only thing lenders look at when they decide whether to give you a loan. For instance, if you have 6 cards with similar limits, 3 that you have charged to the max and 3 that have nothing on them, you'll have filled 50% of your max credit available. If you close the three that are empty, you have used 100% of your available credit, which is not going to encourage a company to lend money to you. In addition, if you have an account you opened 10+ years ago that you don't use in favor of newer cards you got just a few years ago, closing the 10+ years account will make it appear like your credit history is only a few years old. If a lender sees that you have 20 credit cards, it may ask you to close a few. Until then, there's no real rush to close anything.

[baytostay]

I was watching some CNBC show on personal finances

No surprise that this sentence is followed by this one:

There's some very bad advice being thrown around in this thread.

LOL.  That's exactly why I used that disclaimer. I don't know heads from tails about this stuff, but I just wanted to share a piece of conflicting information I stumbled upon without having to back it 100%.