Quick tips to get control of your Credit Score

• Know what your Credit Score is first and constantly keep track of it
• Make a note of how much your income is and how much you owe
• Pay more than your minimum monthly charge
• Never hit the credit limit of any card and everytime you do that your APR is increased by around 5% and most companies do not even inform you about that.
  
• Try not to pay by regular mail. Use online bill pay. You can read the Providian story I have mentioned in my Credit Card experiences below.
• If you want to close any of your accounts try to close the one that you have acquired recently. Do not close the Credit cards that you have held the longest. Doing so will affect your score very badly.
• Never apply or activate any In-Store credit cards (like Express, Sears, Macy’s etc).In-Store credit cards don’t boost your credit score in any way but only add to your outstanding credit limit, if high, that affects your Credit score in a bad way. Upon that they carry an APR of more than 25%.
• If you can’t control your spending habits FREEZE your cards I mean literally put them in a freezer and you can’t use them anymore.
• If you are unable to get hold of your debt get into a debt releif program
• Consolidate your loans for lower.This will help you to get lower APR and make a single payment which would be easy to track
  
• By this time if you have disciplined yourself you can use your credit card as a debit card and keep paying off the purchases. It will boost your Credit score.
• Having a good Credit score has its own advantages. You can get lower interest rates on any high item purchases. Some companies check your score in hiring process
• Some Credit card companies give credit scores for free. For E.g.: Providian updates credit score so if you have an online account you can keep track of it.
• For motivation read the book: “Pay it Down! From Debt to Wealth on $10 a day” by Jean Chatzky.You can buy this book on Amazon for around 75 cents.

Here is the Link: Pay it Down by Jean Chatzky

Here are some Credit card companies that I have had pleasant experiences with:

MBNA- I hold their platinum Plus card. The customer service is really good and if you forget to pay for a month they take off the late fee charge if you are in their good books.

American Express- I hold their Blue for Students. The limit is less but the APR is very low. My card had 14.99% before and when I requested to lower it down they made it 10.99%.I am happy with that

Cards I did not have pleasant experiences with:

Clout: This is the worst of all. High APR’s .My APR was around 26%.I paid it down and closed it.

Providian: I just did not like the company and how it functions. I saw an episode on TV that said many people are filing law suits against Providian as they were not debiting the payments from customers that they received in mail and were waiting until the due date so that they could charge late fee. What a shame.

So be careful when you apply for a credit card. Read the fine print and discipline your spending.

Have a Happy Pay down!