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How Do Credit Scores Go Up and Down?

Written by Banks Editorial Team

Updated April 22, 2021​

2 min. read​

There are many different reasons why credit scores go up and down. How our credit scores go up and down could affect our ability to obtain credit or that important loan for an operation. Did you know, an old late payment will eventually be dropped a from our record and the credit score goes up. Conversely lowering our credit limit would cause our credit score to go down? Another one, do you have a long-standing credit account? If you do, your credit score goes up over time Up to 15% of our credit rating is affected by this factor alone. Do you max out your credit card every month and then pay it before the due date? Bad move, it affects your credit rating negatively. Read on to find out more interesting and surprising facts on how our credit score goes up and down. Learn more about your personal credit score:

Popular Credit Score Companies
Learn about AI-enabled credit repair solutions offered by The Credit Pros and how schedule a free consultation to improve your scores.

The Credit Pros will help improve your credit score by removing inaccurate credit information from your consumer credit reports.

Experian Logo
Learn how to access your credit report and understand, check and improve your credit scores with Experian credit reporting agency.

Check your free credit report and FICO credit score, understand, manage, and improve your credit and protect your personal information.

Grain Card Logo
Learn how you can get a digital credit card in the Grain mobile app, regardless of your credit history or your credit score.

You’re more than just your credit score. With Grain, it’s possible to access a revolving line of credit based solely on your cash flow.

Understanding Credit Factors

As we move through the prime of our lives into the latter years, stability in finances and a positive credit score becomes more and more important. To obtain a car vehicle loan or bank loan we need that credit score to stay up and yet it never stays stable. Understanding how these fluctuations on our credit score occur will allow us to make sound decisions on how to improve that score and our peace of mind. How the Credit Score goes up and down is the aim of this post to help us make the right decisions to keep looking good to those people with the money.

How Do Credit Scores Go Up and Down?

How do our credit scores go up? Late payments, a foreclosure even bankruptcy will eventually vanish from our credit report. Once these negative factors disappear our credit scores will go up. The advice of John Ulzheimer, nationally recognized as credit expert, is to remove small balances left in our accounts, especially credit cards. Pay the “nuisance balances” off. Then obtain a single credit account instead of multiple accounts and bingo our credit score goes up.

Having long-standing credit accounts, especially if it diversified across different types of credit accounts, with low balances creates a recipe for making our credit score climb. Of course, it goes without saying we must pay everything on time, keep our accounts and credit lines up to date and use credit responsibly. This will all help that all-important credit score.

Check your credit score via any one of the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax®, Experian®, and TransUnion®, once a year on AnnualCreditReport.com, or by calling 1-877-322-8228. Identify those areas that can be improved on and make the changes to make your credit score go up.

Popular Credit Score Companies
Learn about AI-enabled credit repair solutions offered by The Credit Pros and how schedule a free consultation to improve your scores.

The Credit Pros will help improve your credit score by removing inaccurate credit information from your consumer credit reports.

Experian Logo
Learn how to access your credit report and understand, check and improve your credit scores with Experian credit reporting agency.

Check your free credit report and FICO credit score, understand, manage, and improve your credit and protect your personal information.

Grain Card Logo
Learn how you can get a digital credit card in the Grain mobile app, regardless of your credit history or your credit score.

You’re more than just your credit score. With Grain, it’s possible to access a revolving line of credit based solely on your cash flow.

How our credit score goes down? Late payments are a biggie. One late payment can really do damage to that credit score. Sometimes they can stay on our record for up to seven years. This has long-term implications if it is a regular habit, lowering our ability to obtain credit as well as the amount of credit available. When our credit score goes down due to late payments it can hurt for a while.

Applying for many credit cards at once or conversely closing your credit cards affects your credit score negatively. On the one hand, many credit card applications speak of a possible issue with our finances. On the other hand, canceling cards, especially with a balance lowers our credit availability. Any type of credit application remains on our credit record for up to 12 months.

Common Credit Score Myths

Believe it or not, buying big on our credit card hurts our credit score even if we pay it off before the due date. The credit score goes down because we have reached our credit limit.

When our account is set to “default” (default on the account as in not paying) because a lender cannot get hold of us and then account is sent to collections, guess what, the credit score goes down. All the fees for calls, collection etc. may also be added to our credit report and again our credit score goes down.

If your credit score goes down unexpectedly mistakes do happen on a credit report, intentionally or unintentionally, so regularly check your credit reports to make sure you are on track.

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