5 Quick Ways to Boost Your Credit Score

Some credit-raising steps take as little as a few minutes

Jon Marcus,

AARP

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Published September 27, 2024

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TV host Pam Krueger has a retired friend who, when a car accident landed her in the hospital, was still paying all her bills the old-fashioned way: by mail.

But while the woman was recuperating, those bills piled up — and she forgot to pay them.

“So now her credit score has really been damaged because she has a couple of late payments,” says Krueger, creator and cohost of the PBS series MoneyTrack and cohost of the Friends Talk Money podcast, which gives financial advice to people 50 and older. “It’s hard to fix that.”

The good news, both for Krueger’s friend and for other people 50+ with subpar credit scores? There are ways to raise your credit score fairly quickly — and some steps take as little as a few minutes.

“If you really want to work on your credit score, you can seriously see material changes and start to make improvements within a month,” says William Gogolak, an assistant teaching professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University, who specializes in credit scores and debt.

Why credit scores matter, even for older adults

Most creditors and lenders consider a potential borrower's FICO score, which ranges from 300 to 850, before offering them credit or lending them money. A poor credit score — generally, a FICO score below 580, according to the credit bureau Experian — can make it harder for would-be borrowers to get approved for loans or to qualify for the best interest rates. “It’s so important to not lose your good standing,” says Krueger, particularly if you’re a retiree, “because now you’re living on a fixed income, and you might need to borrow money” at some point, such as to cover a surprise hospital bill.

A low credit score can also have lesser-known side effects. It could make it more difficult to rent an apartment or even prevent you from getting a cell phone plan.

Don’t panic, though. Here are five ways you can raise your score — pronto.

1. Pay down revolving credit card balances

Carrying a large credit card balance from month to month? If you’re in the position to make a big credit card payment — say, using a windfall that you recently inherited — you could see fast results.

Why? Because a big part of how credit scores are calculated is based on a consumer’s debt-to-credit ratio — the amount owed as a proportion of a person’s total credit limit. This is also known as credit utilization. It comprises 30 percent of your FICO score, which is the credit score most widely used by lenders and creditors.

To calculate credit utilization, credit bureaus look at the total credit limit across all of your loans and credit cards, which is why closing some can work against you. Generally, you should keep your credit utilization ratio at no more than 30 percent, Experian says. If your credit utilization ratio is above that, paying off revolving balances can reinvigorate your credit score.

Dalton Tigner, a partner at Tigner Insurance & Associates in Tulare, California, says one of his clients paid off $10,000 in debt, reducing his credit utilization from 70 percent to 20 percent. The client’s credit score rose 125 points in two months, he says.

2. Request a credit limit increase

Credit limits on credit cards typically aren’t set in stone, says Ryan Marshall, a financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group in New York. “A lot of people open up a card and see that limit and assume it’s there forever. But if you’re disciplined and can increase that limit, you can play around with that utilization ratio a little bit,” he says.

Typically, you can request a credit limit increase through your credit card company’s website or mobile app. Some credit limit requests get approved immediately.

3. Check your credit report for errors

Correcting mistakes on your credit reports can also raise your credit score, fast. Last year, credit bureaus permanently extended a pandemic program that lets consumers see their credit reports once a week for free. You can request copies of your credit report from each of the three major credit agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — at AnnualCreditReport.com.

Unfortunately, Krueger says that older adults often don’t check their credit reports, especially folks who’ve already paid off their mortgage. “I think people assume their credit’s pretty good,” he says. “They can be surprised.”

Consider: 44 percent of Americans who checked their credit reports found at least one error, according to an investigation this year by Consumer Reports and the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization WorkMoney. More than a quarter of the errors were bad enough to hurt their credit scores.

If you spot an error on your credit report, you should not only contact the business that provided the information, such as a bank, credit card company or landlord, but also file a formal dispute with the credit bureaus directly, which are required by law to respond within 30 days.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) offers a step-by-step guide for disputing credit report errors. The biggest challenge for consumers, though, is that the credit bureaus can dismiss complaints that aren’t accompanied by sufficient documentation.

“You need to come with data,” Gogolak says, and provide evidence for your dispute. Evidence might include a bank statement showing an on-time payment that a landlord, mortgage company or other lender reported late.

If the credit bureaus still won’t budge, you can file a complaint with the CFPB. You also have the right to add a statement to your credit report to show potential lenders why you think the information is incorrect.

4. Request creditors remove negative information from your credit report

Put your credit on ice

Many experts recommend freezing your credit so that no one else — most important, no scammers or hackers — can get access to it. You can request a security freeze for free online or by phone, though you have to do it separately for each of the three major credit bureaus. This strategy works especially well for retirees who have fewer occasions to apply for credit. “It’s a tedious process to set up, but once you’ve set it up, it’s pretty easy,” Marshall says. “Then if you want a new car loan or credit card, ask which credit bureau they’re going to run it through, go in and unlock it.”

Even if incidents of late payments or other credit-damaging actions in your credit report are accurate, you might have options.

If you missed only one or two bills over a long period of time, or have a reasonable excuse, such as a medical emergency, you could submit an appeal to the creditor for leniency. “Contact your lender, especially if you’ve never had an issue” in the past, suggests Rod Griffin, senior director of public education and advocacy at Experian. “Say, ‘Hey, I’ve had this account for 30 years. Can you work with me?’ And usually they’ll say, ‘We’ll take it off.’”

5. Set up automatic bill payments

Payment history accounts for 35 percent of your FICO score. To ensure that all of your future bills get paid on time, consider switching accounts to autopay. You’ll be in good company: Nearly eight in 10 consumers already use autopay for at least one bill, according to a Harris poll conducted on behalf of Fiserv, a financial services company.

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Jon Marcus is a Boston-based writer whose work appears in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe and other media outlets.