My Credit Score Project

Several years ago, my husband (then boyfriend) helped me to get my financial affairs in order. He helped put me on the track to paying off my many creditors. He was a great inspiration because he was one of the tiny minority of people who banks and credit card companies fought over. I wanted to clear my credit so that he wouldn't have to be burdened with it when we got hitched. After a few years, I found myself free from looming finance charges, red letters, and phone calls from creditors. I couldn't even get a bank account on my own at the time. The last step I made was to get a secured credit card. As with most of the public, I discovered I was sorely misinformed about what having a secured card meant for my financial health.

I have a secured card with Orchard Bank. With my OB account came a program that lets me check on my scores and reports anytime that I want. It only costs about $10 a month, the charge being set on my OB card. After getting the info pack in the mail, I set up my profile on MyCreditKeeper.com, and took a peak at my current credit state.

There was some good news, but mostly everything was a mess. I did get to see that the creditors I paid off had reported to the big three credit titans (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion). What was a mess was basic information about where I've lived and worked, and a few accounts I had overlooked while trying to repair my credit. I figured with the OB card, I would be on the fast track to seeing those scores go up,up, up!

Checking six months later, the scores were not looking much better than before. This was disconcerting and discouraging to say the least. I couldn't figure it out: I was paying my credit card on time and in full, paying my other bills as soon as I got them, and I was even able to finally get a bank account on my own. Why wasn't this enough?! Then one day...

It was March of 2010. Desperately hoping that things have changed, I went once again to MyCreditKeeper.com. Still little change had occurred. I was about to log out in disgust when something caught my eye. It was tips to improving your credit score. I was surprised to see that although I was doing a lot of things that were suggested, and even more surprised that they didn't seem to be working. I don't know what make me focus on this one piece of advice: spend no more than 25-30% of your credit card limit.

At that point I took action. I made a spreadsheet and called it "The One Year Credit Fix 2010/2011" project. With full skepticism, I calculated what 30% of my credit limit was, and decided to stick to that for a year. Jotting down the scores and setting up the months that I was going to check in on what was going on, I set out to find out if just that one little change would make any difference. I'll say again that I did not expect this to work in the least. Since when was anything having to do with credit easy, right?

On the day I started this project, my credit score average was 660. That is a score where your momma won't even loan you money. I vowed to check up on the progress about every three months. I checked in April and the scores had not budged, not surprisingly. By the time I remembered to check again in August, however, I had to do a double take: my scores had gone up an average of 20 points! This doesn't sound like a lot to most, but for me it was no less than a miracle.

I stayed the course and made sure that I spent no more than 30% of my credit card limit. I had to move some automatic payments to make it work, but thanks to finally having my own bank account, I have the debit card to fall back on (doesn't help that it comes with rewards). I made sure that I didn't forget to pay my CC bill by having reminders sent by email and SMS. One month I had overpaid somehow, and was able to keep a bit of money in my pocket because I didn't have to pay that month. That felt goooooood!

Fast forward to this month, February. I just wanted to take a gander at what was going on, so I signed on the MyCreditKeepper to check out the scores. What I saw made me get my husband to make sure he was seeing the same thing that I was. I was seeing it but I couldn't believe it: my scores were now at an average of 726! I'm heading towards excellent territory woo-hoo!

Since what I'm doing is working, I'm going to stay the course. If I hadn't experienced it myself I never would have believed that changing one little spending habit would have such good rewards for me. My husband likes to kid me and say that before long I can re-finance our home...if it had to come down to that, it's nice knowing that I possibly could.