Building your credit

Therefore, to build or repair your credit, if you have extra cash, pay down as much of your debt as possible. The lower your ratio of current debt to available credit limits, the better you look to a lender, and the higher your credit score will be. The flip side of this is to call existing credit card accounts you may have and ask them to increase your limit, though you won't actually use it. You should do this as often as possible, even if you don't need the credit. This will also increase your credit score. However, please, do not not open additional credit card accounts to increase this ratio, since that may hurt your credit unless you have under 4 open credit cards. But increased credit limits on existing accounts will help since you will be lowering your overall debt ratio.