4 Ways to Improve your Credit Score in Canada
Financing options are quite wonderful indeed, with the advent of credit loaning, it has enabled people to be able to afford something they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. However, it’s doesn’t take much to garner a bad reputation amongst loaners, i.e. have a bad credit score, just because of an unforeseen circumstance such as a shock medical bill. And it’s much trickier to recover from a troubled credit score. Still, there are ways to claw back your credibility, and here are some practical methods.
Of course, before you can actually improve your credit score, you need to know what your contemporary credit standing is. The three digit score is all you need. While you can opt for the traditional method of mailing which requires some patience, with a small fee you can receive an online report immediately. Refer to the online portals of the largest Canadian credit bureaus such as TransUnion and Equifax for further info. If you need a bit of exposition to make heads or tails of what the report entails, the Canada Government site has a nifty article that covers just that.
- Take responsibility
The important thing to realise is that you need to be responsible for your credit score. Keep existing debts running and slowly pay them off demonstrates your accountability as a credit user, and it will slowly improve your score. Even just making timely bill payments help. Ensure that you stick with the credit account for a long period too, as it’s reassuring to loaners when you have a long history of responsible credit usage to refer to.
- Be practical
If you’re still afraid that you might forget about the payment, even after proper budgeting, set up automatic payments. Punctuality is a virtue anywhere, including in paying debts. It’ll also help if you actually use your credit more often, as counterintuitive as it feels, as you’ll actually have more opportunity to improve your credit score.
- Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
Crucially, if you don’t have any present financial dedication, consider getting a car loan that’s within your monthly expenditures. As long as you stick with reputable dealerships that liaise with major lenders that can potentially aid you in regaining credit score. Revolving credit with prompt payments that gets reported to the credit bureau can really boost your credit score. If you can’t quite afford new cars, try to look for used cars a few years older, as long as it fits into your monthly allocation, it will raise your credit score.
- Track your spending
Perhaps most critically is to actually manage your credit spending. Understand credit isn’t actually there for you to buy all the things you want, rather it’s just a convenient alternative to purchase items you really need. In fact, you should try to avoid brimming your credit limit, sticking to around 30% is a good idea. If you can bear the higher expense, request to raise it to keep your overall credit utilisation low.
Credit loans are incredibly handy, as long as the consumer using it actually knows what it’s for. Staying rational plays a major role here, since being able to use more money than you actually have is a tempting prospect. If you still have any lingering doubts, please let us your comments below.