Bad Credit Mortgage
Beef Up Your Credit Rating

We want to help you achieve your financial goals including your goal to improve your credit rating. We think that the annotated information with tips to improve your credit rating may be of some interest to you.

10 On Your Side Tips On How To Improve Your Credit Score

If your credit is high enough you can save thousands over the life of a mortgage or loan. It's only been within the past two and a half years that you could even find out your credit score, or FICO score...let alone how to improve it.

But now, if you play your cards right, you can improve your score and save yourself a whole lot of money.

Bad Credit Mortgage wants to show you how the score is calculated, and how you can change it.

The growing Smith family in San Francisco needs more space. But they have school loans to deal with, and a low credit, or FICO, score.

But the Smith's didn't know how to improve their FICO score enough to qualify for an affordable mortgage.

Sue Simon, MyFICO.COM, says, "It's something that you create, it's a three-digit number that your behavior, your responsible behavior with credit creates."

Sue Simon runs MyFICO.COM a web site that helps you figure out your credit score, and how to improve it. Five factors help determine your credit score.

"First and most importantly, because it's 35% of your score is paying your bills on time," says Simon. "The second key factor which accounts for about 30% of the FICO score is the amount of the credit limit you are using."

The third factor is how long you've been using credit. The fourth is how often you apply for new credit cards or loans, and finally, the type of credit you have.

Simon says, "For example, if you take the easy credit offer, you get from a corner store, that's going to count against you."

Pleasanton Mortgage Broker Ginny Ferguson teaches seminars across the country on how to improve credit scores. How you distribute the debt you have can impact your score. It gets a little tricky.

Say you have five credit cards. Each card has a $5,000 limit, and you've put $1,000 on four of the cards. You are only using 16% of your available credit.

Ferguson says don't dump all that debt together on to one card, you'll be using 80% of your available credit. (Bad Credit Mortgage recommends going no higher than 50% of your credit limit.)

Ginny Ferguson, mortgage broker, says, "And since credit scoring is looking at this from a risk perspective, who would you loan to? The individual using 16% of their available credit or the individual using 80% of their available credit?"

The good news for the Smiths is that with a little financial re-arranging a new home just might be.....in the cards.