More than 30 years ago, I started my career as a mortgage broker helping people make the biggest purchase of their lives: buying a home. I seemed like I had it all together… but I walked into the bank one day, and reality hit me hard.
“You’re overdrawn!” the teller said, not exactly in a whisper.
I looked around, hoping no one recognized me. Here I was, supposed to be the expert, and I had negative $12 in my account.
Then she asked if I wanted to apply for overdraft protection. Of course I said yes.
And then came the real gut punch…
“You’ve been denied.”
I was broke. I had bad credit, and I felt like a fraud.
That moment stuck with me. I kept thinking, How can I fix this? How can I improve my credit score quickly?
So I started digging. I studied credit reports, talked to experts, and read everything I could get my hands on. Slowly, my score climbed. And eventually, I put everything I learned into a system, something simple and step-by-step.
That became 7 Steps to a 720 Credit Score, first a book, then a course. It’s now helped more than 200,000 people rebuild after setbacks like bankruptcy, divorce, job loss, or just plain life.
If you’re wondering—How can I improve my credit score quickly? —then this is a great place to start. I’ll share with you some of the best tips out there for moving the needle.
While you are at it, take advantage of our limited offer to enroll in our credit-education course for free!
FAQ: What’s the fastest way for someone to raise their credit score?
Answer: It really depends on your credit history, so let me give you a few examples that might be relevant to your specific credit profile.
Joshua was one of our students, and when he started the course, his score was low, not because he had any financial upsets, but because he didn’t have much credit to begin with. That’s common. When the credit bureaus don’t see much history, they get nervous. Their job is to guess how likely you are to miss a payment in the next 24 months, and if they don’t have much data to go on, they tend to play it safe and assume the worst.
Joshua’s score was 589, which is way too low to qualify for the best interest rates, much less get approved for some apartments.
So here’s what we told Joshua:
If you don’t have much credit yet, one of the fastest ways to boost your score is to become an authorized user on someone else’s credit card. That means you piggyback on their account and get the benefit of their payment history, without taking on their debt.
But here’s the catch: the account needs to be in great shape. That means the person pays on time, keeps their balance low (ideally under 30 percent of the credit limit), and has had the card open for a while.
Joshua added himself as an authorized user on three of his parents’ cards, cards they had managed well for years. And the result? His score jumped 107 points.
It’s one of the quickest wins we’ve seen for people who are just getting started.
Now let’s look at another example…
Alana came to us after filing for bankruptcy. Her credit score was low (607), but when we looked closer, we found something that made a big difference: Several of her old accounts were still being reported as active, even though they should have been cleared in the bankruptcy. Since no payments had been made on those accounts, they were showing up as severely past due.
That kind of reporting error can drag down a score fast.
We helped Alana file disputes to clean up the mistakes, and once those errors were removed, her score jumped from 607 to 672. That wasn’t quite high enough to unlock the best interest rates, but it moved her out of the “poor” category and into the “fair-to-good” range. And with a few more smart moves that she learned from our free credit-rebuilding program, she hit 720 just nine months later.
Watch & Learn: How Can I Improve My Credit Score Fast?
Here’s one more example, this time from someone with a different kind of credit challenge.
Leo wasn’t behind on any of his bills. He had a few dings over the years, but he paid on time most of the time. But his credit score was still stuck, and when we looked closer, we saw why: nearly all his credit cards were maxed out or close to it.
That’s a big red flag in the credit world. Even if you’re making payments, high balances can drag down your score. It tells lenders you might be overextended or struggling to manage your finances.
So here’s what we told Leo:
Do whatever you can to bring those balances down. The general rule is to keep your credit card usage under 30 percent of your limit. So if you have a $1,000 limit, aim to stay below $300. If 30 percent feels out of reach, shoot for 50 percent to start. And if you can get it down to 30 percent, don’t stop there: Getting it under 10 percent is even better.
Leo got serious about it. He trimmed his spending, made extra payments, and chipped away at those balances week by week. And the results were worth it: once his utilization dropped below 10 percent, his credit score jumped 118 points.
FAQ: Is it true that paying off collections helps your credit score?
Answer: Not always. It’s a common assumption that paying off a collection account will automatically boost your credit score, but that’s not how it usually works.
Here’s the deal: Once a collection is on your credit report, it can stay there for up to seven years, even if you pay it off. Just making a payment doesn’t erase it. And depending on which credit scoring model a lender uses, that paid collection might still hurt your score.
Some newer models like FICO 9 and VantageScore 4.0 ignore paid collections, but older models, including the widely used FICO 8, do not. So unless you know which model is being used, it’s hard to say whether your payment will make a difference.
There’s another layer to this. When you make a payment on an old collection, especially one that’s past the statute of limitations, you might restart the clock. That means the debt becomes “active” again and can stay on your report longer or even open the door to legal action.
But there’s a smart workaround: negotiation. In some cases, you can talk to the collection agency and ask for a pay-for-delete agreement. That’s where they agree to remove the account from your credit report entirely in exchange for payment. While credit bureaus officially discourage this practice, some collectors will still honor it, especially if you get the agreement in writing. When it works, a pay-for-delete can lead to a major score jump, sometimes 50 to 100 points or more.
We discuss this strategy in Step 6 of our free credit-education course.
If deletion isn’t an option, paying the collection still has some benefits. It can stop collection calls, reduce stress, and show future lenders that you’ve taken care of your obligations. Just know that in terms of credit score improvement, the real wins come from either removing the collection or building new, positive credit behavior, like paying your current bills on time, lowering your credit card balances, and avoiding new hard inquiries.
FAQs
FAQ: How much does credit utilization really matter?
Your credit utilization matters more than most people think. In fact, outside of paying your bills on time, it’s one of the biggest factors in your credit score.
To see just how much it matters, let’s look at a personal example from one of our students, Marisol.
When Marisol started the 7 Steps to a 720 Credit Score program, her credit score was 662. She had never missed a payment, but her balances were high across the board. She had three credit cards:
- A $1,000 limit with an $870 balance
- A $2,500 limit with a $2,300 balance
- And a $4,000 limit with a $3,900 balance
That’s 90 to 97 percent utilization on every card.
We didn’t ask her to pay everything off at once. Instead, she focused on bringing each balance below 30 percent of the limit. That meant aiming for $300 or less on the $1,000 card, $750 on the $2,500, and $1,200 on the $4,000 card. She used a combination of snowball payments and extra side income to make it happen over about three months.
The result? Her score jumped from 662 to 719. That’s a 57-point gain, just by lowering her utilization.
If she keeps those balances under 10 percent, she’ll likely cross the 720 mark next month.
So yes, credit utilization matters. It counts for 30 percent of your credit score, and lowering it is one of the fastest ways to answer the question: How can I improve my credit score quickly?
… especially if your payments are already on time.
FAQ: Is it worth it to open a new credit card if I’m trying to rebuild?
Yes. If you don’t have at least three credit cards in good standing, then opening new ones is one of the smartest moves you can make.
Here’s why …
We tell our students to think of their credit score like a GPA. If you failed a class last semester, the only way to bring your GPA up is to start acing your next few classes. Same thing with credit. If you’ve had late payments, high balances, or even a bankruptcy, the key is to build strong, consistent behavior moving forward. That’s what credit scoring models are looking for—recent positive behavior.
And you need three credit cards in good standing to create that pattern. Three gives the scoring models enough data to show you’ve turned things around.
So, if you don’t have three cards open and in good standing, there are two ways to get there:
- Fix the ones that are already open (if they’re behind or have high balances)
- Open new cards if you don’t have three
If you’ve been through a bankruptcy, the answer is even more direct: Yes, you need to open three new credit cards. The ones included in your bankruptcy no longer count toward building your score. They’re considered closed accounts, even if they still appear on your report.
And here’s an important tip: Open those three cards on the same day if you can. That way, they age together and support your score as they get older. If you open one now, another three months from now, and the third one next year, you’ll be stuck waiting much longer for all of them to mature.
We’ve seen hundreds of students use this strategy—three cards, opened smartly, paid on time, kept below 30 percent of their limit—and go from the 500s into the 700s.
FAQ: What’s the biggest myth people believe about credit scores?
The biggest myth people believe about credit scores is that it takes 7 years to rebuild your credit score.
We hear this one all the time. And honestly, I used to believe it too. It’s easy to see why … late payments, collections, even bankruptcies can stay on your credit report for seven years. So people assume that means their credit score is stuck for that long.
But that’s not how credit scoring works.
The truth is that your most recent behavior matters most. Credit scoring models are built to predict whether you’re likely to miss a payment in the next 24 months. So while negative items might stay on your report for years, they have less and less impact over time, especially once you start building positive history.
We’ve seen people go from the low 500s to the 700s in just 12 to 24 months. That’s because they focused on what credit scoring models are really measuring: recent payments, responsible use of credit, and a pattern of stability.
So if you’re asking yourself: How can I improve my credit score quickly?, focus on adopting new patterns of behavior over the next 12 to 24 months. That’s where the real transformation happens.
