I don't know why I haven't posted something like this on here before. I've posted stuff like this on facebook, but never on here, and I think this crowd will appreciate it and it may be useful to you. I'm a self proclaimed credit score expert, and love to help other people with theirs. I systematically built my credit score up to an 833 at my highest with $326,150 in personal, unsecured, credit card limits over 12 credit card accounts and $101,000 in business, unsecured credit over 5 accounts. Up until a few days ago, I had zero debt. (I'm finally using some of this capacity during the stock market craziness to make some money off the uncertainty) I'm know there are other people with higher limits and crazier stats, but I'm just a normal person making a decent living. There is no good reason for me to have such insane capacity. It's all in how I've played the game.
I spent YEARS acquiring this knowledge and experience, took chances, tracked everything on excel spreadsheets, and completely nerded out on all this to get to this point. At 832, there's no more to go. It ceased being fun and exciting for me, since I can't really get any higher. (850 is technically the highest, but there's no meaningful difference in an 832 and an 850), so I started helping some of my friends and family with theirs, and then expanded to helping random people who are patient enough to listen to my rambling. I get on a roll with this stuff and completely overload people with too much information. LOL!
As a real estate agent, I am involved with lenders all the time and it amazes me the lack of creativity when it comes to this stuff. If debt to income limits are maxed out, but someone has an account on their credit report with a low balance and high payment that they could easily get rid of, why not ask them to pay it off and free up more borrowing power? Simple things like that make HUGE differences. This is just an extremely simple example. There are so many games to play with credit scores. If you have a card with a $2,000 limit and a balance or $1,000, you're credit report is showing a utilization rate of 50%, which isn't the greatest. If it's a company that is generous with credit limit increases, you could ask for a credit limit increase online with the click of a button, and say they increase you to a $4,000 limit. Now you just went from 50% utilization reporting to 25% utilization reporting just by clicking a button! That may be 30 points on your credit score from clicking a button. That's crazy to me, but understanding the rules of the game allows simple things like this. There's absolutely nothing wrong with improving your score like this. I'm not involved with removing accounts and writing letters, etc. I play by the rules and use them to my advantage or to the advantage of someone I'm helping.
My knowledge on this is way too crazy to put into a single post. There are entire forums about this, just like this one is for real estate. I devoured them for years. I got so deep, that I knew the exact dates the algorithms for each credit card company would accept your request for credit limit increases, and their criteria for approval. When you know all that, all you have to do is check the boxes and it's an automatic yes. That's how I built such a crazy amount of credit. I rarely ever spoke to anyone on the phone, as I really didn't want them actually looking at what they were giving me. I have a Bank of America Card with a 56K limit. Who needs a 56K limit?! I have this with utilization usually reporting to the credit bureaus at 0-1%.
One way to help your score tremendously is to have have lots of available credit, but not use it. It takes time to build. Every time you apply for a new account, you take a hit on points for a new hard inquiry and for shortening your average age of accounts. Eventually the ding fades, your age of accounts ages and your score returns better than it was before. It is part science and part art.
One more insane thing that happens to us here who borrow money- your credit score is a snapshot of one moment in time. The lender pulls it and uses that snapshot to determine how much interest to charge you for up to 30 years! How insane is that?! Your credit score can fluctuate wildly. What if they pulled it the day before you paid off that maxed out $500 credit card? You went from 100% utilization the day they pulled it to 0% the day after. Your score likely would jump a large amount. But you're going to make payments for a long time based on the score that they saw when they pulled it. With a little preparation and understanding, you could have timed it much better and took advantage of a better snapshot, saving potentially thousands and thousands of dollars over time. It's so important, and I don't see near enough discussion about it.
With all that said. I'm here to help! Is there anything I can do to help you along your credit journey?
