The Fastest Way to Build Credit
Bankruptcies, collections, and slow payments are still a problem for many today. They feel bound by past financial mistakes. But there is hope and a way to escape bad credit. Even with bankruptcies, there is a fast way to build credit.
That’s impossible, you may think. Not true. Students in the 720 Credit Score program can verify this happened for them.
Along with my usual recommendations—paying down credit card limits and becoming authorized users—I tell spouses to leverage each others credit scores.
What’s leveraging a spouse’s credit score? The quickest explanation: you and your spouse must have separate credit cards. In an emergency, temporarily transfer your debt to your spouse. After the emergency, take your debt back.
Some examples are applying for a loan and wanting to secure lower interest rates or if you are a candidate for a job and the company runs a credit check before hiring new employees. (60 percent of companies run a credit check at least some of the time.)
If you have a balance that exceeds 30 percent of the limit on a credit card, you can transfer a portion or the entire balance to your spouse’s credit card.
Leveraging your spouse’s credit is the fastest way to build credit because it makes a huge difference. With the credit scoring systems calculating outstanding debt as 30 percent of your credit score, your score will quickly increase if you lower your outstanding debt. You can then walk into the loan application or job interview with low personal debt and a higher-than-usual credit score.
Though you might lower your spouse’s credit score, you can quickly “buy back” the debt using your credit cards once you secure the loan or job. Of course, you will need to repay the favor if your spouse ever needs tricks for how to build credit fast!
If you would like further information, please read the following blogs:
How Can I Get Credit Cards if my Credit Score if Terrible?
How do I Build My Credit Score Fast?
