I have been working on my credit for a while now. I have Credit Karma and Credit Sesame accounts, I use the credit score features on my credit cards I have, so I monitor it closely.
My score is at a point now to where it is getting difficult to see any substantial improvement to it. Most of these sites usually have six criteria they rate and from Best (Green) to okay (Yellow) to needs work (Red). On all of my reports everything is Good or Green except for inquiries and credit age. They are both Yellow. The inquiries will improve by the end of the year as all inquiries but one (1) will fall off. But the age will not improve to a Good rating for a while because most of my credit is 5 years or less, average age 2 years.
Based on simulations, even if I pay my credit cards off it would only raise my score by 5 points. I also have a personal loan and auto loan and a mortgage.
The age I can’t help except to wait and keep doing what I am doing. I plan to pay all the credit cards off in the next 4-6 months. But as I said that will only raise my score slightly.
I guess the only other thought is this, would paying off my personal loan and auto loan to remove that debt, raise my score and would it be a few points or more substantial. The personal loan is about 16 months old, the auto is maybe 36+ months old.
There are no late payments on my report, no collections, no public records, no negative anything so the only thing I have to work with is the debt I owe since I can’t increase my credit age magically. Unless I am missing or forgetting something. Any help or suggestions will be appreciated.
If everything else is green, there isn’t much you can do. If you close your personal loan, it could affect you in two ways; raise your score slightly by utilizing less of your overall credit, or lower your score slightly by lowering the total amount of your available credit. Also, not sure where the loan ranks in credit age, but that might affect you also. Unfortunately, once you get to a certain point, building credit is a slow journey because of he credit age factor. Keep on pushing, you can’t help the credit age, but you can just keep doing what you can do. Good luck.
The average age is probably whats holding it back as you stated. If you need a quick jump, you can become am authorized signer on someone’s cards in which they have a long history at a company which reports for authorized signers. This could help with the age. Other than that, if you have overt 750 you may find that there isn’t much benefit to look forward to . Do dont stress over the numbers too much.
Thank you all very much. Your very quick, honest and helpful. My score currently with about 9%-11% Debt ratio, depending on the credit bureau, is 754 and with paying off my credit cards there is very little improvement and still under 760. I will run the simulator on paying off the person loan, auto loan and both to see what it says.
There may not be a huge benefit in my score to paying these off early but having them paid and a smaller percent of my income dedicated to bills or debt, takes a weight off my shoulders and allows me to add those extra funds to savings or investments which is a big plus.
I will follow up and let you know what difference it does or does not make between now and December by paying those all off.
Thank you. The personal loan is newer so it would not impact the credit age in a negative way, but my auto loan I am considering paying off early IS an older loan but would it being an older loan paid off hurt the age or anything other than increasing my score by paying off that debt.
My credit to debt is at 9% and will be 0 in the next few months. My goal is to continue to save money but also pay off all my debts except my mortgage by the end of the year. If I can stay on plan. I do tend to treat myself to a WANT item once in a while because I feel rewarding myself for good financial behavior is worth it and keeps me from getting down about not getting any benefit from it. Positive reinforcement for good behavior you could say. That way I don’t get burned out and give up and go crazy. Which after months of hording pennies it can happen.
