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FICO Credit Score - Your credit score is only as good as what shows up in your credit report. Review your reports from all three credit bureaus for accuracy once a year as well as several months before applying for a loan. Changing a mistake on your report - such as a payment that is wrongly labeled as late -- can take 30 days to three months, sometimes longer.
Pay bills on time. This is the best practice you can have, and it's imperative that you make prompt payments close to anytime you need a loan. A late or missed payment in the last few months is likely to lower your score much more than an isolated late payment five years ago.
You must reduce your credit card balances. A heavily weighted factor in your FICO score is how much money you owe on all your credit cards relative to your total credit limit. Generally, it's good to keep your balances at or below 26% of your credit card limit.
Please "Pay Off Debt" rather than moving it from one account to another.
The ratio of your credit card balance to your credit limit is key, closing out an account and transferring the balance simply means you increase that ratio, which is likely to lower your score.
In other words, say you owe a total of $1,000 on four credit cards, each of which has a $1,000 limit. Your total credit limit is $4,000, of which your total balance ($1,000) accounts for 25 percent. If you transfer all your balances to two cards and cancel the other two, your total credit limit is reduced to $2,000, and your $1,000 balance now accounts for 50 percent of that limit.
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